To My Future Husband (Skyra Francesca Rideaux-Carencro, LA)

24 years 10 months 309 days

A witness to my loneliness

God’s  attempt to fulfill His Purpose

Through His daughter

A daughter that used to claim another father

But cries for want of his voice

24 years 10 months 309 days

Silent frustration at the lack

Of respect mothers are teaching their sons

Doors not opening on the passenger side

Of my crossed ankles

Chairs still pushed slightly underneath

Cheap tables and dutch balances

I Love you coming from lips steamed in passion

Between closed legs instead

 Of on bended knees with pearl rings

A mother made when still a child

Left with the scars of regret and anger

Fighting my own demons between

The blood on innocent sheets

He should have been yours

You should have been mine

And I yours, We all belong to God

But choices have led to a path

Where three years of abstinence

Three years of waiting to be

My husbands crown and spread

Diamonds on silk sheets of marriage

To a man God told to find only me

Three years of empty passenger seats

Tables for one,

And spider webs growing in places

Where passion never pulsed

The man my husband should look like

Sleeping in a tomb near God’s Hand

I die everyday longing for both

my father and my husband

because both have abandoned my heart

and left me to my lonely independence

its dark here where I cry

and I cry and I cry

for the father that will never

walk me down a garden filled

with forget-me-nots

for a son who will never know

the image of manhood

for the husband who will never

know I am enough

for the life sacrificed to a God

of mysterious ways

for a woman too scared to admit

that every night when God’s listening

she prays for her future husband

for the man that God promised Jesus would be

the bridegroom to my loneliness

the crown of my future husband

24 years 10 months 309 days

And still I await his answer