Ten years and counting

since I learned to bleed

Wounds no longer festering

inside this shell of broken dreams

Time redeems the hollowed spaces

while the hand of God replaces

the varicose traces of those imprints on my soul

Embraced in the Whole that gives me freedom

Losing bondage for the Kingdom

Eternity’s gift the day it saw the shackles fall

I will never look the same

a different cause, a different name

The knowing abandoned at the end of my glance

No reflection of your brand upon my heart

just one stroke in the beauty of this art

Now I dance in the comforts of chance

in a world divinely made for me

Thank you for the time you couldn’t spare

for stealing moments of my air

for breaking down all the good I tried to see

So grateful for vacant dinner tables

silence when all was unstable

unheard cries through darkest nights

heartless acts with scornful might

That smothering absence of any heed

whenever my spirit couldn’t breathe

was exactly what I needed to survive

Never was a fall so low until your kind

I came to know and still the rise so

ever high once failure resurrected hope

The scope is immeasurable

this growing into self in spite of self

by way of self’s ability to overcome the impossible

You crushed the innocence of my love while

laying the stepping stones for my ascension

And at least in this dimension I am compelled

to thank you for all the wrongs that fueled

the heaving throng of miseries which freed me

Ten years and counting the ever mounting

sea of blessings which hold my being

in a depth of seeing that guides my path

since the day I walked away from you