From the other end of the phone line my little sister says,
"Andrea, Poppy flowers are beautiful in the right light."
I say, "Laura you're right and landmines look like toys to children til their limbs explode,
And their families find their bodies in ditches on the side of the road."
Our mother is crying herself to sleep again tonight.
Your daughter is in my arms wondering where you are.
And maybe this light is right for you but from here I can't see the stars.
In the morning the sunbeams will look like jail bars.
Please... come back.
Please. I'll breathe I love you into your bloodstream until the needles can't compare.
I'll tether my veins into thread and stitch them through your torn seams.
I'll scream light into your bruises still lives beneath your track marks.
You can stand on the cliff of my heart and shout nothing but ugly through me.
I promise all I will echo back is, "Beauty, beauty you have always been beauty."
Did I ever tell you on the day you were born, I stopped believing in Jesus and started believing in you?
Sometimes it's the metal in the windchimes that remind us how soft the breeze is.
So even when you grew like a switchblade.
Pupils dialating the apocalypse.
More junk in your veins than blood.
More rage on your lips than love.
I still believed in you, I knew you blew this world a kiss, and no one blew it back.
I wish I had a roadmap back to that time before you mainlined midnight, in search of an escape.
I wish I'd had your back that night.
I wish I'd told you life is going to hold you at gunpoint but time usually comes with a white flag.
Cause right now, there's a body bag around the moon.
And everytime youe daughter cries, the constellations look like chalk outlines of crucified angels in the sky.
I'm not sure I'm strong enough for this.
I can see the veins in my wrists too clearly.
Can see the knife in the drawer, we are more alike than you know.
But, your daughter's heart is beating I can see her pulse in the soft spot on the top ot her head.
In the other room my mother is asleep and dreaming now of the times when we were babies just like her.
And maybe we'll never be that new again.
Maybe there will always be days when the sunbeams look like jail bars.
Maybe it will seem we have more scars than life lines sometimes.
I have found it's always worth trying to find a way to walk away from the landlines.
Hope you walk away with your skin in tact enough to drink the moonshine.
Girl I know you think this world is too dark to dream in color but I've seen flowers bloom at midnight.
I have seen grey skies and they were real close to looking like the sunrise.
And sometimes It takes the most wounded wings, the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is.
How precious the flight.
So I'm still not believing in Jesus I'm still belieivng in you.
I'm still telling your daughter the moon is a kite attached to a string that is held by your mother.
"And, I promise she is coming back soon."