Where Are You?

In the cool of the evenings God walks down my street and whispers

"Where are you?"

For a while I thought I could hide.

I thought I had disappeared.

My companion, my friends, could walk right through shadow me
on their way to the kitchen
for nothing more pressing than an apple to snack on.

I grew pale.

I practiced living all the questions inside me.
I shrugged them off when they didn’t fit.
They never did, not one.

Then, one evening at dusk I heard the question again,

"Where are you?"
and with it my pulse began to beat,
thin but steady.

I listened.

Eventually I answered – I'm still here.

In that moment I heard this in the spaces

between the heartbeats: Write.