The Life You Need, a Poem by Matthew Pullar

…accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

(Pierre de Teilhard Chardin)

Second Sunday of Lent.

Confession prayer, and my fingers

are consumed with unweaving

my eldest son’s TheraPutty from 

his liturgy booklet, pressed

in some moment of sensory need 

to the perforated part where you share

contact details and prayer requests.

                                Merciful God,

I murmur, while my fingers seek to separate

obsidian stickiness from paper, prising

pitch from prayer. How thick this

dark matter strung through it all. How like

the petitions I barely mumble, hardly knowing

what to ask, what contact to seek.

Give me another life, forked tongue whispers

while hands fidget rosaries from paper.

I demand a life that conforms, that reflects

light as I expect, not this

accelerating pressure that drives me

outward to an unseen, undeniable mercy.

I have left much undone, have much 

I must undo. How to remove 

prayer from this putty that tars it all?

Greeting of peace passes. I bundle

puttied paper into a ball to squeeze.

Pressing into the hands of my maker and judge, 

I pull my sons towards me, breathe life from their hair,

pursue the peace that will not pass,

the life that squeezes as it sculpts.

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Matthew Pullar is a poet based in Melbourne, Australia. His work has been published widely, in places such as Amethyst Review, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, Reformed Journal, Ekstasis and Fare Forward. His latest collection of poetry, This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025) was shortlisted for 2025 Australian Christian Book of the Year.