Birthday

You hear piano music, I've seen the sun shine through medication, experienced love, loss and heartbreak, sadness, sickness and a hollow dark. I am exceedingly pale, a life in Heaven, an old gloom surfaced, each day with an invisible wooden cross to carry, I've learned that beauty can be frightening, life can be impossible and there's hope, there's hope for me and you, the madness of people, baleful days, statues in the Vatican and how the entire place is cemented with such gold, a place dedicated to a barefoot man who preached such poverty, such grace, such emotions.