Lord, this prayer is for anyone. With a pair of bruised hands and baggage-burned eyes, a thousand pound soul and languished sighs. If you’re bound up, shackled up, beat down, held down, giving in, giving up, at the limit, at the end — just stay a step. One more. God, receive us, free us, renew our senses, put the color back into things, to taste the dimmest light seeping in. Give back to us something like joy and motion. Not how it used to be, but the flip of a page, the next chapter, the ready texture of a blank white sheet ready for the feather-dipped black to begin again. Lord, this prayer is for anyone. — J.S. Park
