Untitled
To be honest, I don’t know where to begin
But how could I when all I’ve known is the end?
The end of reality’s eclipse when my mother tasted the force of my father’s fist
The end of my finger when it crawled down my throat when I went to the bathroom alone.
The end of the blade that I drug across my waist
again and again in an attempt to breathe
in the waves I was drowning in.
Or the end of Your light,
Yes, I remember vividly that tangible darkness that covered me four hundred and sixty eight long nights
And I can’t help but cringe whenever it blinds me from time to time again.
You see, all I’ve known is the end
Like a patient waiting to die
Doctor, doctor! Do you hear my cry?
Because this incision looks a little too wide
As He pulls out
Corrupted lungs,
from years of inhaling death
and exhaling hopelessness
a sunken stomach
rotting from the inside out
starved of bread
A broken heart,
held and torn by the hands of men who’s love
was lust dressed in sheepskin
and an old pair of blind eyes
that have forgotten what light even looks like
“For my good,” He says,
as He pulls out my whole identity
I begin to weep,
Do you not see how much this hurts me?
I fight
I kick
I scream
God, don’t take away my familiarity
after years of living in a broken body
sitting in a tub of medicine burns
and being scrubbed clean hurts even worse
and as I’m laid down beneath the surface,
I believe wholeheartedly that this is it:
my God is just another one deserting me.
so I close my eyes
hold my breath
let myself sink
and I fall
only to find myself in His arms
pulling me out,
I feel a heart beat in my chest
All of a sudden I can breathe again!
he wraps me in a robe of righteousness
he sprinkles me with oils of joy and gladness
and He replaces my old with His new
It’s not until He restores my sight
That I see my blood flowing from the holes
in His hands
And I realize how much more this has hurt Him.
Yet He looks down at me
with tears in his eyes and says
“all because I love you enough to not let you stay that way,
my child, you’ve been set free.”
Now He gives me a new beginning every morning
And I never have to know an end again
Rae of Poeima 