Gifts From God
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Her tears lost to rain ...
Dorothea stood in the cold mist,
her habit soaked through, though she cared not.
The gray markers spread out before her like stone soldiers at attention,
as if she were a commander of the dead ...
'No', he would have corrected, 'You are my gift from God' -
her soldier, as cold as stone, now long dead,
deep in the frozen earth at her feet.
She ached for his touch ...
it had been twenty-two years since he'd left for the war -
since he'd been killed protecting his platoon,
yet the wound was as raw as ever,
and the longing for his smile burned a hole in her deepest being.
God was the only thing that made it bearable,
and that devotion was for his sake alone, not hers -
not the children she tended to at the abbey,
not the twisted-limbed gentlemen at the veteran's center,
not the numberless parishioners she had comforted over the years,
not the long lines of homeless at the shelter,
not even the family members she loved and missed back home,
but his ... and his alone.
She read the gravestone aloud,
as she had done so many times before:
"Lieutenant Theodore James Crowley, Jr"
Theodore ... Gift From God, she thought to herself ...
Though she hadn't known it then, it was what her name meant, too ...
almost as if it had been planned, somehow ...
as if it was ordained by the heavens ...
almost as if God had created them ... for each other.
Which, of course ... He had.
N/A'd May 27, 2020, 4:05 AM
In the "Nun" Poetry Contest
N/A'd June 5, 2020, 11:24 PM
In the "Select 5, Any Form, Any Theme" Poetry Contest
~ 3rd Place ~ in the "N/A Re-Run 7" Poetry Contest, John Hamilton, Judge & Sponsor.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden | Year Posted 2020
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