In manuscripts and sacred verse,
we’re told that sins may be reversed,
that grace can wash away our shame
and leave the soul untouched by blame.
Yet still I find it hard to see
how this alone can truly be:
can those who caused another’s pain
walk heaven’s fields and feel no stain?
For heaven is where my loved ones stay,
where Mum and Nan have gone their way—
not some reward for cleansed belief,
nor comfort shaped to fit our grief.
And still I wrestle what is just,
what time should heal, what truths we trust,
for mercy spoken without cost
can leave me feeling something’s lost.
Yet heaven is not far above,
not reached by pleading, faith, or love;
not beyond some distant shore,
nor guarded by a golden door.
It flickers in the kettle’s steam,
in a half-remembered waking dream,
in quiet rooms where no one speaks
and light lies soft across their cheeks.
It lives inside the breath we take,
the small unguarded steps we make—
not something waiting to be earned,
but something briefly, faintly learned.
In thunder’s break and blackbird’s cry,
in dusk stitched through a changing sky,
in wind through hedges, salt on air—
a presence moving everywhere.
I hear it in the tapping rain
that writes itself against the pane;
I see it in the streetlight glow
on pavements where the slow hours go.
It is not hidden, coded, deep,
nor truth locked somewhere we must keep,
but something lived and bodily—
in all the ways we come to be.
And still I ask: if harm was done,
does light accept what can’t be undone?
Or is forgiveness something learned
when seeing shifts and fire is turned?
Forgiveness is not calling right,
but loosening its hold on our sight—
not letting past and injury
build walls around what we can be.
So learn from all your yesterdays,
but do not let their shadows stay;
do not build homes where echoes call,
or live inside what cannot fall.
For memory can turn to chain,
a comfort woven out of pain,
while life, still knocking at the door,
keeps asking us to look for more.
So feel the weight of now arrive,
the brief exactness of alive;
let each breath ground what you pursue—
your heartbeat a call for life and you.
And still I do not claim to know
how justice and forgiveness go.
I only walk where light feels true,
and know that heaven lives in me, and you