Chipped Paint

The iridescent glass beside me

Opens up to a world I know well—

The garden of my childhood years.

The place where dreams and ideas dwell.

I see the flowers bloom and jasmine crawl

Up along the crisscrossed trellis beams

Whose white paint has been slowly chipping,

Aged by sun, love, and years of use, it seems.

For so long I’ve sat at this circle,

Daydreaming of life and its choices.

But now dreams are frivolous wonderings,

Or at least that’s what they’ve said, the voices.

I must do something, they say to me.

I cannot sit idly by, ever.

I must do something, or I will die.

There’s no room for childish pleasure. 

But something keeps me tied here, waiting.

I cannot tell what forces me to rest.

A thought, piercing, like ice on a burn,

Shocks me, my heart pounding in my chest.

Would He still love me if I sat here,

Never leaving my spot at the table?

No, the voices tell me in my mind.

You must do something to be stable.

You must do something to be loved.

Chills creep up my spine as the words sit,

Hoping to take root in my fragile

Heart whose paint has long been chipped from use—

Worn and weary, no longer agile.

But the truth slowly climbs the trellis.

It will not be deterred by chipped paint.

He loves me if I sit here forever

For works will never make me a saint.