By the Rivers of Babylon
Poem by Rachel Joy Welcher
BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON
An imaginative reading of Psalm 137
By the rivers of Babylon we sit and weep. I scoop water into my hands and splash it over my face. Shock and ice. Relief and purity. My hands need this coolness, this shiver, for they throb under constant use. I run my fingers across the calluses that have formed. My hands ache the way my heart aches. An instrument I used to love to play now feels like a slavedriver. I strum the songs of my youth, but lately, I play them through tears.
Rachel Joy Welcher, Sometimes Women Lie About Being Okay
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RACHEL JOY WELCHER
is a poet and author living in South Dakota with her husband, Pastor Evan Welcher, and their longed-for daughter, Hildegaard. Rachel works as an editor at Fathom Magazine and Lexham Press and received her Master of Letters in theology from The University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of four books: “Blue Tarp” (Finishing Line Press, 2016), “Two Funerals, Then Easter” (Dustlings Press, 2018), “Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality” (InterVarsity Press, 2020), and “Sometimes Women Lie About Being Okay” (Dustlings Press, 2022).
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