Valeria Boltneva / Pexels

• Grace
• We tell ourselves the truth at random times:
• what we crave from the menu, what sounds ridiculous on film.

• Otherwise, we hoard secrets: brown mice building a nest
• in the center of the woodpile, faking an enthusiasm for darkness.

• What a tragedy, to be such gullible liars.

• Can we not learn to say what it is we want?
• Security and romance, just the same as the patty melt?

• We rarely allow ourselves to be small (we’re just crickets in reality).
• We are afraid of what will happen when everyone sees that
• we desperately hope there is a God.

• Such clever people have no use for grace.

• That He Knows about the Lilac Tree—
• —which only lately
• announced itself to me
• in the corner yard
• behind spurting weeds

• Surrounded,
• I remember as humble
• as I read.

Julia Wehner

Julia Wehner has been writing poems since her first poetry unit in the third grade (the birthplace of such works as “If Only I Could Marry Food”). Her largest dreams for the future include composing piano music, educating her future children in the art of noticing, and cooking every meal with home-grown fresh herbs. She hopes to tell honest stories through everything she writes, innovating commonly-felt human emotions in an attempt to catch readers off guard: to remind them how richly good it is to feel, and to live.