Red Light Prayers - Part 2

After having spent this night with my students on deserted Costa Rican street corners in conversation with young transvestite men who were selling themselves, the haunting words of Octavio Paz pulled at me.

I am a man: Little do I last

And the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

at at this very moment

someone spells me out.

They were men but their names were 

Nicole and Jasamina,

Alejandra,

Stephania and Erica. 

I will not forget them.

The bondage they are in, like the city corner they inhabit, is a

Dark and cavernous abyss,

An empty anonymity.

But I knew that God knew who they really were, knew their stories, felt their pain and alienation, was loving them even as they were.

I knew he was tracing the letters of their real names in stardust,

In the tail of some comet,

Was longing that they come to know their true identity in Christ, longing to free them to be loved with a pure love, as he intended. 

It's 1am but I wonder if I will sleep tonight

Knowing that they are still under the night sky, 

Praying that they will look up.