Buffalo Flats

by Martine Leavitt

Where was he? What explanation? What of this picking up and shaking? This schooling? Was it meant to mean something? Was that the point? Was that the kindness, in the end? Was she expected to stop being a child of God and become a woman of God? Was she meant to stand and say, I carried this, I carried it, and I testify that I carried it? Was she meant to one day look at God and say, I am your child, I am royal, I have this to say, that I am royal. What you gave me I have loved. God didn’t want her to be timid and shrinking. He wanted her to stand, to know her worth, her infinite destiny. Sitting and sunsets were one thing, but you knew him, really knew him, in the sorrow and in the serving. She understood that now.