What Was Offered, What Was Kept

A Poem

What Was Offered, What Was Kept

It began in good faith—
a door left ajar,
a question laid gently
on the altar,
like oil or bread.

There was curiosity in the air,
the kind that dares to wonder
what belonging might mean
for the ones
not always sure
they do.

There was kindness in the asking,
and a hush in the room
where wonder stirred—
the kind that waits
to see if love might widen
its arms
just
a little more.

But winds shift quickly
in sacred halls.

And so—
what had been welcomed
was returned.
Not with cruelty,
but with care-wrapped caution,
language polished
until no sharp edge
and no clear path forward
remained.

A letting go,
they called it.
A clarification.
A re–
affirming.

And the Spirit—
always the Spirit—
lingered near the threshold,
weeping like a prophet
outside the city gates,
waiting for someone
to remember
that love
was never meant
to be so narrow.

Still,
not everything can be taken back.

A whisper remains
in the walls of the room.
A name, once spoken,
lingers in the dust.
The courage it took
to imagine more
does not disappear
so easily.

Some truths,
once glimpsed,
continue unfolding—
not in headlines
or public letters,
but in the hush
between heartbeats,
in the prayers
no one knows how to finish,
in the way the Spirit
keeps circling
the edge of the camp
long after
the welcome signs
come down.