What have we made of our lives?
What is the shape of my life?
Have all the edges been torn
Am I old or reborn?
What is the shape of my life?
Who can shape a lifetime?
How many hands have shaped mine?
Whose caress brings life? Whose touch brings death?
When all that I love slips through my fingers,
Can I shape a future with these hands?
We carve and we scrape,
We smooth and we shape each other.
Yes, we shape each other.
And sometimes we cut and we tear to reveal things,
And the scars that grow back have no feelings.
And we seek out pain trying to remain
The same cold crafted likeness,
Someone’s work of art.
Can’t we draft in rightness
Each cell, part by part.
And start,
And start to live life.
Nothing more, just live life,
Like before my hands turned us to clay, waiting…
I will not let this shape my life,
A life that’s mine to make
With my dreams and tears and secret longings…
Can I shape my life,
Shape my own life,
Shape one precious life?