Featured in Caesura 2020: Imago
Non-Requiem
Sky colored eyes, just a huckleberry kid;
I fell in love with your sheepish smile,
The boyish kindness in each gaze and gesture—
A boundless vision of the world
That somehow fit in your pocket.
Ripples of sorrow from your brow;
I wrapped into each moment of cracked existence—
Christened with your breath and your need.
Left without a promise, but with far too many,
And the smuggled moments of sunlight, and frost.
Curls to wind through my fingers, upon request;
I chose you and chose you and chose you,
Bleeding for the chance to bind your wounds.
Covered in trees and starlight and
The fragrance of irreversible change.
Sharpened jaw and chapped lips;
You broke me with your weathered eyes.
The haunted hollowness of having lost yourself
Or found that you never truly knew—
Deception tied to my ankles, evaporating.
Age lines surround those eyes, fingers cut;
A face gone from memory and replaced by a ghost—a failed hope.
You could have been, could have been…
Save him, for though the suffocation buried his body
He has yet to die.
Of Joy Surrounding
Clutter my house with words.
On my door frames and ceiling tiles—
Etched into the floorboards.
Paint my windows—
Stained glass sentences
Perfuming the light
With phosphorescence.
And we will live among the colors.
And we will bind these words like stones.
And abide in stride, our citadel.
Bonus poems
Far Better Than
Far better than the joy of knowing you,
Of finding slumber in your gracious gaze
And hungers quenched and stoked in your arms—
Far better than every inch of your smile,
Of the comfort of your tongue and pen,
And deep abiding promises kept,
Better still than your wise benevolent eyes,
Of walking by brick and lake,
And aching hearts together met—
Better is the Wind tangling my hair in the evening.
Better is His hope eternal, the joy enduring.
Better the gaze He grants, upon me and unto me—
That allows me see you,
And see others as His own—
Better His heart than your ’wn—
But oh most glorious and enthralled thought, that through your love may I know His more—
That in your arms, somehow the heavenly store—
To learn and lean more deeply as one than two—
Tis my dream and desire,
Covenant by fire,
Bound with imperishable praise—
Our sighs sweeter still,
Perfuming the throne-room as the breath of flesh made one.
In Memoriam
Like the ache of a bone
Once broken—
Tucked tight away,
Estranged from the day-to-day,
Still it stays.
I accept
That though mended
My arm may always burn
When it rains on a Tuesday.
Kendra Housel is a graduate from Indiana Wesleyan who majored in English and Honors Humanities. She has worked as a published writer for the past three years for IWU’s alumni association and is currently serving as the writing intern at World Gospel Mission.