“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he was talking to us on the road?”
—Luke 24.32
A song you didn’t hear,
ringing in your ears.
Anticipation of a kiss, its
memory, its warmth already fading.
Wakefulness that’s not your own.
A silent accompaniment.
A resonance vibrating in your chest
that makes you look around.
An answer, unprovoked,
a tendril reaching as if for light.
Something about “kingdom
among you,” ungrasped, firm.
An echo following the silence,
always just out of sight.
A sure, embracing presence
beyond the door, the sky, within.
The collapse of a stranger’s strangeness,
a tenderness, an urge to bow.
This impossible reverence rising in you,
belovedness passing through you like blood
as if Someone is here.