Scattered, groaning, shattered, gasping,
slivers, shards
of splinters of motes of dust of a world
so long lost, so brazenly betrayed, so sadly stripped naked, 
stumbling, wringing, bleeding, telling
(with last gasp, with muffled cry, with piercing hope)
a story:

A story of being one not two,
alive not dead,
laughing and loving and singing not
leaving and lonely and stealing
hope in shattered reflection of silver glory
refracted, still present but hidden puzzles,
missing connection, lacking sinews to bind together 
flesh and spirit, 
love and truth, 
the real seen and the real unseen,
not prismatic false illusion,
spinning and reeling out to catch the truth in spiral
and show the side distorted,
the story seen from an infinity of angles
misses out on recognition 
as motes whirl on different dancing planes
of the great truth that was, is not, and will be again
and meanwhile endangers the shards with love,
threatens with the good but self-annihilating doom
that the splinter will be joined to the twig,
the twig to the branch,
the branch grafted in to the trunk 
with merging chromosomes
(the way it was always meant to be)
but never the same, 
the lines of fracture no longer harmful,
no more significant, but still there,
mementos and tokens and scars and reminders
of what we went through to reach the All,
of the undeniable truth of darkness 
and the indelibility of choice
and the fracture of the world is mirrored in us
down to the smallest atom,
and motes though we are, 
we split and splinter and cut our reality, and
incorporation requires integration requires 
devolution of self, acceptance of gravity the Inexorable,
the ever-present crush of narrative that squeezes history
to a single point that we all approach
in the same swirling tornado, and either lose ourselves
in its dark, violent, primal embrace,
or are cast off into the great nothingness and void
of the frozen nether abyss…
but if we survive the transit from mote to molecule,
with structure now to link and bond and build,
we find the fire was our friend, 
sun rising, earth shining, but stars raying hope no more,
since hope is meaningless when the sun is already up
and the night is gone, motes made one, shards collected
and shining in a mosaic of a million dimensions,
reality severed and reconnected and ancient and aware,
no more innocent but more perfect than innocence
could ever allow, the knowledge once taken blindly
now earned, digested, understood in
broken bodies made indestructible,
twisted minds made pure,
hopeless hearts forged to glittering diamond,
understanding all, loving all, touching
earth with feet and heaven with head
and God with the lasting perfect kiss
of creation to creator.
(Amen).