There will be days when heaven doesn't seem so close.
When there seems to be no hope.
Your back is hugging the ropes,
and that stomach could use some bread.
When the air in your lungs feels like lead,
and all the fight in your breath has disappeared and left,
Strive.

During the tough weeks,
the ones where everyday feels like Monday morning,
The train ran local and you keep spilling your coffee
at the desk of a job that looks
nothing like the misspelled poster,
pinned to that dreamy first grade call when they asked you,
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Anything but a coward.

During the long walks to work,
your wallet is filled with the lint of last month's bills.
Knees weak from dusting your life's problem
under the rug of success.

There will be times when you're at your lowest point.
You are the ash of a Phoenix with clipped wings that will never rise.
You are a broken levy,
unable to control the drowning of your household,
Strive.

During the sting and the swallow
of the worst beating,
the black eye,
the bloody lip,
the five seconds after you caught her cheating.
The unprayable eruption of rage,
the millisecond before the body,
before the body becomes a landmine trigger ready to burst into smoke.

Things will fall apart,
break,
rapture,
rip at the seems.

When your spirit is starving and your heart's got plans on becoming a martyr,
when the aftermath of blood and battlefield pours itself into the flesh of the universe,
and the scars grow so thick there's barely any skin left.

When the fog dwindles upward into the empty spaces between the clouds,
and the pain rains down,
tumbling to the sound of screams and unattainable dreams
as they mummy the land,
When lust has mangled the spine of love,
Strive.

May the days you wish you were somebody else
never return.
May you learn the braille of glory and happiness
until the sidewalks sing with everything you truly are,
and the street corners cave in your name,
and the nightmares are no more.
May the faith engulf depression into ash.
May the choirs of demons be muffled,
silent like the breeze of an explosion.

May the hands,
the breath,
the pulse,
the feet,
push forward until every doubter quakes with fear,
and the buildings beat with the blood of our existence,
Strive.

May you learn to mend yourself.
May the muscle flex in the eye of defeat.
May the tears spring from the face of the wounded.
May the vulnerable stand monumental and moveless.

Strive.
Strive.
Strive:
Like you're a marching band of single mothers
who smell your kid's dream so you know you've got to make it.
An immigrant worker slaving to feed the belly of your country two oceans away.
Strive:
Like your heart's the size of a blue whale.
Like you're shouting at the edge of your fingertips.
Strive:
Like Nina Simone is singing at the finish line.
Like Toussaint L'Ouverture is picking the locks to my ankles and wrists.
Strive:
Like you know, prisons are man-made but minds are God-made,
So Harlem Shake that gospel out of your bones.
Strive:
Like you got:
Biracial hair
in Birmingham,
you're that girl,
and you've got,
ten things you want to say to a black woman.

There will be days when heaven doesn't seem so close.

When the dust settles,
when the smoke clears,
only the power of will shall remain.

Those who fight shall conquer.

During the toughest of weeks,
the longest of walks,
the days when heaven doesn't seem so close,

Strive.