Hour Fifteen 11:11

I once had a friend named Bitterness
whose caustic nature ate away
at the very core of my being.
Memories, a swampland I slogged through
with years of mud caked to
the tattered soul at my feet
while Bitterness urged me toward my defeat.
The pain, a prickly blanket
tearing at the flesh of my persona-
souring the taste I once had
for the life of present or future.
Bitterness took my hand
and led me down the
dark recesses of my past
with empty tables and empty glasses
and food that sustained my ashen tongue
that did nothing but articulate
my fragmented heart and destitution of life.
A mere existence of breath
and rapid heartbeat
pounding out of breath
as the well of optimism ran dry-
thus dehydrated pleasantries
clung to the surface of a parched soul
like the remnants of an ancient banana
clinging to the stillness of a table-
the former fruit of my labors of kindness.
Biting the bit in which Bitterness led me,
it cajoled me to linger within
dusty hallways of
what might have been
and the cumbersome load of
what if’s spurning another
onset of optimistic senility
stunting growth and movement.
Chained to the ground-
burdened by the perceived slights
and desperate attempts to
condemn my heart to a
purgatory of charcoal existence.

When one day, Grace and Mercy appeared,
their blinding light cutting through the
melancholic shadows
spotlighting my wounds.
Their illumination an antiseptic
stinging like nettles
burrowing within the fleshy bits
of wounds ages old
that had not yet healed properly.
Layers of scab grew up on scab
with each turn in the past
they caught up on the amassing agony
tearing on the edges like paper.
They plucked the darkness from me-
hushing the protests of Bitterness
and it reluctantly stepped aside and back.
As years of pain and trauma that had
grown like a cancer onto my countenance,
Grace and Mercy, with delicate touch
and a hush of love to quiet my cries
exhaled a breath of life into
the cancerous unhealed darkness
and it shrank at the warmth,
skulking away in a huff of offense
and shaking with fear
at the strength I had to slip
from the evil of it’s gnarled grasp.
The two new friends with the touch of warmth
defrosted the icy bits of me
that had caused me to grow hard,
reminding me of what it’s like to feel soft
and that those who inflicted pain
also suffer from the same ailment as I.
With a smile, they sat with me
threading a needle each to
bind the wounds-
covering them in a poultice of
God’s word and refreshing my memory
of His love and the sacrifice made-
of a love that covers a multitude of sin
and from Him,
my healing begins
and is completed, creating a whole me
as opposed to the fractioned self
Bitterness encouraged me to be.
My resolve resurrected as He is,
I’m ushered to continue my path
leading out from the darkness
of a perpetual death
and into the light of day.
For the sun shines upon Him
as He leads the way-
To be forgiven one must forgive
He states,
so Bitterness had no choice
but to walk away.