Even this pot-bellied prayer, who staggers to the altar half-drunk with delusion, and the other half hungover with optimistic excess, leaning now into despair, even in blindness, in these neglected robes, stinking and torn in all the wrong places, with potatoes growing where hearing might breathe, who can’t carry a tune to save a life, who can’t even start by saving the one they have, who will forget this morning’s penitence at the next chance to scheme some way ahead––even this one here is greeted with the warmth of a loving parent just now seeing a beloved child for the first time after so long away that anyone with any sense would have declared them lost, a hopeless case, too far gone.
Wayward One
Willing to approach