“Quality Over Quantity Gal” by Nicole Gabriella Scipione
Author: Nicole Gabriella Scipione
How do I quantify all the things I’ve burnt, bludgeoned and broken?
Tuesday it was my toe in a move to be committed to the given circumstances of the scene.
Today it was my purple cauliflower in the oven, blackened to shriveled crisps,
When taste-tested prior, only the heartiest needed a little softening,
Otherwise, perfection; yet I ruined every remaining ounce of them.
How do I quantify my searching and fearless moral inventory for 12 step work?
It was 126+ printed pages in 12-point font.
THAT’S how.
But who’s counting?
Was length due to rigorous honesty,
self-immolating hatred from Calvinistic origins
instructing me I’m “totally depraved” since birth,
from being a general optimist and personal pessimist?
Hyper-vigilance, turning all stones?
Is it quantified in years trying,
dollar amount made,
followers on an external marker of human significance?
Significance of what?
How do I quantify all the human needs, cultural practices and radical belonging
we’ve nationally stripped from others,
often in the name of our God?
With incendiary hubris, burnt others to a crisp,
claiming them less holy than our interpretation of the Divine.
We’ve roasted others in ovens –
sickened on my knees this isn’t only metaphor –
How do I quantify the impact on my friend’s cousin
torn from his family and tiny child by ICE,
what is the quality of the sorrow,
and what is most needed to help our beloved immigrants?
The letter, the protest, the sign,
the visits, free legal aid, our compassionate ears?
I borrowed from my savings to pay the rent and tithe my ten percent,
what do I have?
How do you quantify emotional battery?
How do you measure me, my beloved Lord?
Beneath the razed landscape of charred cauliflower,
Buried somewhere beneath my oven,
is there a tunnel to the center of my soul I can traverse?
Can the quality of my empathy guide me by the scent of compassion,
blind mole seeking mercy,
before I reach senescence?
You ask me to walk by faith.
I’m crawling by intransigent hope
on my elbows in the pitch-black tunnel
to help build a tender Kyoto kingdom,
where the quality of love and time given,
is suitable partner, healing ground,
to the quantification we seem addicted to.
How many people can we keep out?
How many people want you (or don’t)?
How many, how many, how much?
Can you feel how much I love you, my Lord,
by the quality of our closeness?
Why don’t you intervene in that vast tunnel
between justice and what is?
Close the gap, spoon us closer,
eliminate regimes that crush?
We went to Tijuana to help build bathrooms with CLUE Justice
I accidentally break the sink I’m painting to beautify its presence:
the preacher volunteering beside me dubbing me Queen of Destruction,
when all this plucky little heroine longs to do is pass around the tenderness.
“What is mine to do?” Rohr asks. Me too.
I’ll just keep crawling
one elbow in front of the other,
seeing the calluses on Your invisible hands,
knowing your caress is true.
We pray for the miracle of synesthesia
to smell what is broken
taste what is right
what else can this little mole creature do,
except rely on You?
Who gets to decide the value of someone?
Let me smell Your grace and answer “You.”
© Nicole Gabriella Scipione
Featured in: The Lighter Weight of Being
The Lighter Weight of Being is the culminating multimedia and interactive event for the 2025 - 2026 Resilient Artist cohort.
