Prayer for the morning

Did you rise this morning,

broken and hung over

with weariness and pain

and rage tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind?

Get up, child.

Pull your bones upright

gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun.

Draw breath deep into your lungs;

you will need it

for another day calls to you.

I know you ache.

I know you wish the work were done

and you

with everyone you have ever loved

were on a distant shore

safe, and unafraid.

But remember this,

tired as you are:

you are not alone.

Here

and here

and here also

there are others weeping

and rising

and gathering their courage.

You belong to them

and they to you

and together,

we will break through

and bend the arc of justice

all the way down

into our lives.

--Audette Fulbright Fulson