Therefore, behold, I will allure her
and bring her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her
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I remember the wilderness, the way it looked, but mostly the way it smelled. The lonely cold way of earth pressed against the rim of a lake, the sting of rock filling your nose, the breath of trees leaning over. It smells like everything you don't talk about during the day.
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There I will give her vineyards
Make the valley of Achor a door of hope
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A beaten doorway, alone in the earth and sky. It's painted blue.
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I think of my mother's love of vineyards, remember driving bars into the ground to support the plants, the powdery feel of the dirt in my hands. No water, and still no water, and even as her vines dried up I was struck by the way she nodded at failure, kindly, like they'd met at a friend's wedding years ago.
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We'll try again, she would say, and this settled in some cavity of my body, sunk into bone, and I am only now even aware of what it bore in me. I am afraid of cold and pain, all their sharp edges, but not of my vines dying in the light of the sun.
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There she shall answer as in the days of her youth-
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What youth? If there was one, I don't remember it.
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as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt
And in that day you will call me 'my Husband'
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I'm not sure exactly what a husband is. I touch the poetry-pouch of my earlobe, the curve of bone under my flesh like a curtain pulled over the back of a chair.
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no longer will you call me 'my Baal'
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I forgot that I love you more than the things I hate out of very existence. The smallest gift I could give, but I place it on the floor. There's a wind kicking up.
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I will betroth you to me forever
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice
In steadfast love and mercy
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The wild, the vineyard, the doorway. I can't name what it is I want.
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And you shall know the Lord.