Lila Robinett Tindall 

Lila Robinett Tindall is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi where she studies Creative Writing. She is a native East Texan who relocated to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, after graduating with her MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. Her work can be found in Five South’s daily journal, Ekstasis, and Vita Poetica.

all shall be well

After Julian of Norwich

I told myself not to ask

for wisdom anymore, not

for humility, not for love

to make its way to anyone, or me

nor for anyone's face to be turned

upward, inward, toward.

If I wanted to know

if Christ would bring me

back home I had to believe

in the void & there’s no point

in thinking into a void. I had to believe

that prayer was nothing but thoughts

and thoughts are nothing but

spaces in between branches, the wind

running in between.

***

Blood runs between

bone spaces. These careful thoughts

are muscles, matter

that grows with sweat,

not a void where abstractions swallow. I believe

there’s no point

in going back home I have to believe

Christ exiled me

so that I could know

the brackish movements of turning out, in, toward

the face of the world; everything

to contort myself, face

humility, and love

for wisdom of bending

open and opening myself to all being.

Read Lila’s work and more in Solum Journal Volume VI: Doubt (forthcoming).