Esther Ra

In Your Hands

~ Psalm 139 ~

Hours, months even,

when your stark light washed over me

in waves of unbreakable pain.

Sometimes, I stayed very still,

like an insect quivering on a wall—

stretched tight, desperate,

a black blot of clenched terror.

Sometimes I ran away,

like a child wet with fear

who sits in the darkness

closing her eyes

believing she might disappear.

You know me, God:

my glut of selfish longing,

my pooled stains,

my glass heart.

You gaze into the bubbling

floor of my thoughts.

You brick me into the kiln of your hands,

you press me to pumice in your palms.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

Even at my most animal—even when I burrow

into the damp earth of unfaith & forget,

even there your hand grips me fast,

make of my silence a story—

I pray, Lord, your thoughts may grow clear to me,

that I may inhale them, a mist of jeweled dew.

You who know me, who know my heart:

how can you continue to love me?

Search me, God, and sift me,

till the clumped ash of my wail fall away,

make of me a trail of clear fire, hard flame:

burning glass flowing into the sea of your name.

Still Life with beating Heart

[Jesus] rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it… “I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

~ Mark 9:25-28 ~

Salvation, in the beginning, so closely resembles

death. Every time [    ] disappeared, I felt myself die

a little inside. Felt dead without [    ] to die for.

The lung deflating without something to carry.

The heart grumbling violence of its loss. I carried

[    ] until [    ] carried me: gave me weight, gave me reason

to breathe. Without [    ] I was color of whisper. A burnt house,

dry well, diamonds clattering on an icy & uninhabited planet.

Raincoat in land where drought was ongoing for years.

In English, the phrase: I am nothing if not [    ].

In Korean, the saying: Without [    ]

she would be a corpse.           & yes

sometimes  I’ve felt like a corpse:

unbeautiful     ungraceful        unseen.    Oh God,

how small I can make myself be.

How wrenching, Your first work in me.

Teach me, Lord, how to exist

unslaughtered by sin        or suspicion.

To eat from your hand at twilight & dawn

& know You alone          are my God.

Here is my heart, Lord— the size of Your hand.

Take me, breathing yet.       Make me whole.

Testimony

When a few friends asked me to share my testimony,

I was embarrassed, and a little afraid,

and said Probably not.

I am not like my parents, pastors in Korea,

who glow when they speak of God, describe Him

with ardor and conviction.

I’ve always wanted to live my faith

before talking about it,

and I’ve never been good at either.

I am hesitant to talk about God: like describing

a faraway mother in a foreign tongue,

there are no words to hold Him in my grasp.

My atheist friend asks, Esther, if somebody you loved

most in the world died, would that shake your belief in God?

And I have no answers, because somebody whom someone else

loves most in the world is dying every day,

and I have chosen to love an unknowable God.

He calls this a cop-out, and says, OK.

What if everyone you loved died AND Korea was nuked?

Would that do anything to your faith?

And I have no answers, just like I had no answers

when I saw my parents, two people who loved God

so fiercely they would give up their lives for Him,

hurt each other so deeply they often wanted to die.

I had no answers when I sat in the hospital room,

watching the parents of church members grow lighter

and lighter, their bodies dissolving in crematoriums to snow.

I had no answers listening to the stories of North Koreans

who lost their daughters, then their bodies, to the hell

we made of this earth; to the wars tearing the skies

of so many countries; to children grown so thin

their eyes hang in their sockets

like filaments of dimming light.

I am afraid. Of the sadness, the aloneness,

the mystery. I am afraid to die.

I am more afraid how to live.

But I know this: when I lap my tongue

in the warm hand of God,

I taste something I still call hope.

I have felt God, not only in the sun-flooded grass,

but also those long bus rides home in Korea

where sadness was so close a companion

strangers watched tears drip from my eyes.

I have felt God in hospital rooms shattered with grief,

where we held a dying woman’s hand

and prayed over her departing spirit,

and saw the ghost of a smile flutter over her lips

as she breathed her last word: Amen.

I felt God when my youngest sister,

one of the people I love most in the world,

watched a truck crash into her car so hard

all the windows exploded in a starburst of glass,

and she called me afterwards, breathless

but unbroken in her one beautiful body,

and all I could do was thank God and cry.

I felt God when I prayed for my mother,

and watched the dark curtains of her grief

open to the tender and soft child

who somehow survived within.

I am a sinner and a doubter

and a child of my generation.

I know so little

and live so far from the holy.

But I believe because I would rather

live all my life waiting

than live without anyone to wait for.

And God, how grateful I am

for those you have sent

to wait here with me.

For my faith family,

each with their trials and tribulations,

still welling with river-bright praise.

For my friends unbelieving

but so full of light,

their love a small proof of Your gaze.

The first response of everyone who met Jesus

was to run to those they loved, saying,

This is the One! Come and see!

So we come, Lord, our palms open, our hearts hungry.

In this life, which passes so swiftly,

like a midsummer night’s dream,

we dream of you, Lord.

Hear our singing.

Set us free.

Esther Ra is a bilingual writer who alternates between California and Seoul, South Korea. She is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023) and book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018). Her work has been published in Boulevard, The Florida Review, Rattle, The Rumpus, PBQ, and Korea Times, among others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize, Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Award, 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and Sweet Lit Poetry Award. Esther is currently a J.D. candidate at Stanford Law School. (estherra.com)