What the Angel Wrote on the Bathroom Wall

Each tree is perfect.

Branches missing, patches of bark scraped away.

Even the dead ones are perfect. 

There has never been a mountain designed incorrectly

nor a cloud we would call deformed or out of place in the sky.

Even the rudest ocean wave never hurled itself against the land

at the wrong moment.

No leaf ever fell too soon.

And you

with your runny nose 

and fear of spiders

and a parking ticket tucked under the wiper blade.

You are the very glory of it all.

You are absolutely in the right place.

You are in the right place like the Mississippi River is in the right place. 

Because the land decides how the water moves through it-

not the other way around. 

This is how it is.

You are in the right place. 

Your pain, your mistakes, your heartache

the losses too big to ever be made whole. 

Not just your runny noses and parking tickets.

All of it.

Everything you know is as natural as water flowing.

The river obeys the land with unrelenting devotion 

and only courses the proper way. 

Let the world show you this-

that your whole fantastic mess of a life story has always been absolutely perfect.

Perfect like a mountain is perfect, or a cloud.

Perfect as a bent and scraggly pine tree finding its small but significant position in the light.

Perfect as your tears

and your need for air.

Perfect as the birth and death of stars

and the quiet autumn morning softly broken by the sound of birds and trucks in the distance. 

-M