Rocks

I wrote this poem about four years ago, when I first studied 1 Corinthians and was given the task to look at what I felt I was entitled to. Four years later, I had picked up all the same entitlements but masked them with different words and different spins but they were the same. I let them go again and I hope that four years later I have not picked them all up again.

At the Bottom of the Sea
I stood upon a dock lined with mattresses,
With five friends standing small.
So no one sees the inscriptions I wrote upon their faces,
The words harbored in my heart from all.

Together we hide in the darkness,
Hoping it will bring us peace.
But the harder I clutch their hands,
My contentment begins to cease.

Their stony faces have no expressions
As they stand solemnly still.
I close my eyes just to be hidden
From the outside world.
I carried them around all day and night.
My entitlements, my rocks, my rights.

Freedom stood across from me,
The eldest of them all.
He was given to me upon my birth,
And always standing tall.

Fiercely independent and strong,
But upon my word and command
He would jump into the ocean himself
For I knew without him I could stand.

The twins of a pair stood in between
They were the desire to be praised
They never parted each other's side or mine,
For Respect and Affection are what I most craved.

They rarely looked at me,
But eyes were always daring off into the distance,
Hoping to catch a glimpse of someone watching
For a stolen smile would always lift their spirits.

I carried the twins for as long as I could talk,
When I saw that words brought praise and high remarks
Desperate speech I used just to get attention
It was a long a journey I thus then embarked.

The youngest, Leadership, stood next to me
He was new to this twisted family I had formed,
But the easiest to see with his dark sleek face
All knew that I deserved to have such a beauty adorned.

The smallest and easily missed
Stood quietly at my side
I rarely spoke of him
Or with him one day I might abide.

The man, the partner, the husband.
He was a future right, but one I wanted still.
The man I rarely spoke of to anyone.
It was my heart he was meant to fill.

He would be the hardest to let go of.
But then again, I held tightly onto to all of them.
They sat together, out of sight, out of mind
For everyone else had their own burdens.

Five rocks. Five rights. Five words.
I carried them around the nights and days
That I stayed on this secluded island.
Weighing more each moment that they stayed.

Smooth and soft, round and real.
Each I knew I deserved to have and to hold.
Who could contest that I had not earned them.
Yet there was one who wanted them let go.

I was commanded to throw each one away
Into the depths of the ocean below.
And there they would remain in
The dark depths that would swallow them whole.

And so there I stood alone
With these strange friends of mine
Small simple, but carrying great burdens
That had plagued me for too long a time.

One by one I threw them into the giant sea
Never knowing where they went or would go
All give, for it had to be all or nothing
I just let them go.

I felt lighter the moment I walked back
Without five rocks buried in the small
Pockets of my pants. But there was the unsettling feeling
That I had not done the right thing after all.

For I missed those rights once they were gone.
And even though that island is far behind
And the rocks are lost among the sand and sea
With other of their own kind.

I am still tempted to pick them back up.
God give me strength to leave them where they belong.