Flowers Behind a Cardboard Wall

When I came home from Kenya I stopped writing altogether for awhile. I put off the newspaper article I had to write, my journal began collecting dust, my "thank-yous" were on hold... My heart was so heavy that I knew pen and paper would never do justice to what I felt. I bet God felt this way when the bible came into existence.. so much He wanted to share with us, but only so much we would be able to conceive with our human minds. We hadn't seen His beauty and His land, so how could we understand Him fully? Not to compare my writing to the Bible.. I am not blasphemous.. but in a way I wonder if I am feeling an ounce of how God felt, and so He used people to tell stories, used Jesus to recite parables, used humans to sing songs and prophets to give us hope of what will become. So all I can do is write my parables, my stories of a land so far away but still resides in my heart. After being home for a couple weeks and feeling distraught at not knowing what to do.. I grew a little angry with the people around me and with myself. I wanted everyone to do something, do good works and I felt worthless right along with them. So as I sat in a starbucks waiting for my college church service to start one evening.. I felt inspired to finally write something. Something that soaked up my tears and frustrations. I think I am ready to share it now.. This is what I wrote...

"Flowers Behind a Cardboard Wall"

You don't see past your cardboard walls.
Your walls are dull and fake
dissolving in water,
falling in wind,
burning in fire.
You color on the walls, a beautiful landscape of pastels
etched to perfection.
Your lips smile.
You believe it is real.

A gun fires behind your cardboard wall.
You pretend its soundproof- you hear silence.
Behind the wall, children are denied food: a drawn out murder of starvation.
All your eyes see is the Utopian paradise where children play in field of wildflowers.
Outside the wall, winter hits and the petals freeze and shatter on the ground.

Your wall reaches to the heavens- holding the ugly in its place outside the cardboard.
But God will confuse the language of your heart soon enough.

A weed sprouts beneath your foot.
You cover it with cement and tall buildings that echo Mt. Zion.
You cover them in gold and worship with paper and plastic,
finding your worth in false gods of consumerism and fashion.

The weed busts through the weak crack in the cement.
Your foot is easily led to its spindly body,
crushing the very life it was given.

Flowers watch from balconies in disgust.
They are not naive about life outside the cardboard wall.
Weeds and flowers were equal once-
both growing,
both sprouting,
both surviving.
Suddenly, one became ugly and invasive while the other was worshiped in bountiful gardens of color.

I hate your cardboard wall.
My silence can not tear this wall down.
My anger grows another inch to your comfort, your wall.
The more truth you hear, the more you hide.

Have you forgotten that your wall,
that window,
your shallow life,
is not real?
that pastel window is $8 chalk in form of a fairytale scene.
The sun does not always shine in such splendorous rays.
It sometimes burns the petals of your wildflowers-
eating the precious skin
that litters the earth.
Have you forgotten?

I will not speak to you through that cardboard window.
It distorts my words and lies are written on my face.
My eyes do not glimmer in your false sun,
they shimmer in the eerie moon of the forgotten, the hurting.

Instead, I venture into the world of cardboard people telling them the news-
both bad and good.
But when my foot slips in, satan locks the door behind.
He hands me a bouquet of paper flowers and the warmth of the sun feels real.
Slowly, I forget why I came.
I forget about truth and I begin to indulge in me.
But the pastel runs and my flowers smell stale.
I become a silent weeping willow...
stuck.
stagnant.
Loneliness sets in as I recall my freedom in a world I once knew.
I weep.
Sap pours from my bark,
inching down my long limbs,
dripping to the cardboard floor.
The sap stains the ground around me a deep, crimson red.
The color is real and my eyes brighten.
I remember the grace given to me so long ago,
that still runs within me.
I call out.

My roots transform.
I stand on strong legs of muscle and flesh.
And I run.
I flee.
I never look back- fearful of being snared again in worldly lies,
truth being frozen in a pillar of salt.
I flee.

The cardboard walls are flimsy and I easily break free
from the devil's grasp.
But I hear him shriek as he sends his army for me.
Footsteps echo as they approach my exhausted body.
They pursue me.
But, before I am consumed,
a light pierces the heavy blanket of night.
It strikes the demons and blockades them from my heart.

I fall to my knees.
I gasp for breath.
The truth surrounds me and I take it in.
No false sunshine or glistening brooks.
But something within this truth, I realize,
outshines beauty found anywhere else-
within my mind,
within the world,
even within the cardboard walls.

I am free again.
I find safety in the walls of truth that never fall.
I stand upon injustice and will fight for the broken,
and the lost of this very real world.
A world filled with the most glorious wildflowers
that may wilt and die...
but at least have a chance to bask in truth,
and be that light in someone else's life.





--Emily Welch--