Let it be as you say. So Rahab sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window. Joshua 2: 21
All her life they told her, the world is only like this—
events tumbled smooth, added to a string, one
after another, endless chains,
& she believed. Her world was status quo
and that’s the way it is. The poor remained so,
the outcasts were not welcomed inside. You
were born into your parents’ sorrows, lived
with your sins, you died when you died.
There was no dimension, her feet trudging
the flatlands of days—
still, every once-in-a-while she would sense
something shift, pull her toward an edge,
but her feet would return to numbing paths
& comfortable transgressions. Her distorted
vision ran dark, swift and deep, blue-gray,
mottled brown. She slips transparent
between people, unseen, unseeing she walks
to the end of her world and there, tightly tied,
a cord, pulsing vermilion but real. Real. Woven
at the beginning of all things, spoken into being,
a breath of wildflowers, myrrh, and wine.
She ties the cord around her waist, leans
into the void like tall grass caught in a wind,
she sways at the edge, one foot extends
in bold assertion, despite the chasm
yawning beneath. Her world is not flat,
is not the sum of her sins. She falls
forward, falls into the palm of the One
who soothes her hard angles, who knows
her by name, a name she now says, unashamed
to be known, Rahab,
Rahab, you are home.