Hour Fifteen 11:11<\/p>\n
I once had a friend named Bitterness
\nwhose caustic nature ate away
\nat the very core of my being.
\nMemories, a swampland I slogged through
\nwith years of mud caked to
\nthe tattered soul at my feet
\nwhile Bitterness urged me toward my defeat.
\nThe pain, a prickly blanket
\ntearing at the flesh of my persona-
\nsouring the taste I once had
\nfor the life of present or future.
\nBitterness took my hand
\nand led me down the
\ndark recesses of my past
\nwith empty tables and empty glasses
\nand food that sustained my ashen tongue
\nthat did nothing but articulate
\nmy fragmented heart and destitution of life.
\nA mere existence of breath
\nand rapid heartbeat
\npounding out of breath
\nas the well of optimism ran dry-
\nthus dehydrated pleasantries
\nclung to the surface of a parched soul
\nlike the remnants of an ancient banana
\nclinging to the stillness of a table-
\nthe former fruit of my labors of kindness.
\nBiting the bit in which Bitterness led me,
\nit cajoled me to linger within
\ndusty hallways of
\nwhat might have been
\nand the cumbersome load of
\nwhat if’s spurning another
\nonset of optimistic senility
\nstunting growth and movement.
\nChained to the ground-
\nburdened by the perceived slights
\nand desperate attempts to
\ncondemn my heart to a
\npurgatory of charcoal existence.<\/p>\n
When one day, Grace and Mercy appeared,
\ntheir blinding light cutting through the
\nmelancholic shadows
\nspotlighting my wounds.
\nTheir illumination an antiseptic
\nstinging like nettles
\nburrowing within the fleshy bits
\nof wounds ages old
\nthat had not yet healed properly.
\nLayers of scab grew up on scab
\nwith each turn in the past
\nthey caught up on the amassing agony
\ntearing on the edges like paper.
\nThey plucked the darkness from me-
\nhushing the protests of Bitterness
\nand it reluctantly stepped aside and back.
\nAs years of pain and trauma that had
\ngrown like a cancer onto my countenance,
\nGrace and Mercy, with delicate touch
\nand a hush of love to quiet my cries
\nexhaled a breath of life into
\nthe cancerous unhealed darkness
\nand it shrank at the warmth,
\nskulking away in a huff of offense
\nand shaking with fear
\nat the strength I had to slip
\nfrom the evil of it’s gnarled grasp.
\nThe two new friends with the touch of warmth
\ndefrosted the icy bits of me
\nthat had caused me to grow hard,
\nreminding me of what it’s like to feel soft
\nand that those who inflicted pain
\nalso suffer from the same ailment as I.
\nWith a smile, they sat with me
\nthreading a needle each to
\nbind the wounds-
\ncovering them in a poultice of
\nGod’s word and refreshing my memory
\nof His love and the sacrifice made-
\nof a love that covers a multitude of sin
\nand from Him,
\nmy healing begins
\nand is completed, creating a whole me
\nas opposed to the fractioned self
\nBitterness encouraged me to be.
\nMy resolve resurrected as He is,
\nI’m ushered to continue my path
\nleading out from the darkness
\nof a perpetual death
\nand into the light of day.
\nFor the sun shines upon Him
\nas He leads the way-
\nTo be forgiven one must forgive
\nHe states,
\nso Bitterness had no choice
\nbut to walk away. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1485,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5772,5765,680,193,3019,2158,326,15,228,391,10,355,390,1084],"class_list":["post-139528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","tag-2023fullmarathon","tag-2023poetrymarathon","tag-poetrymarathon","tag-193","tag-24-hour-poetry-marathon","tag-full-marathon","tag-marathon","tag-poem","tag-poems","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-marathon","tag-writer","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1485"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139772,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139528\/revisions\/139772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}