From Birth
My journey from birth to shame to repression to rebirth to freedom to life to forgiveness.
Birth
I emerge! A wild world wakes within me, a wide world without,
each breath becomes me and I am without
a single impulse held back, not a heartbeat restrained
because I AM ME, beautiful, untamed,
marked by joy, by love,
every burst of day so bright,
a laugh, a spark,
my essence of goodness
distilled into light.
Shame
Until I learned good was not enough,
perfection tarnished every touch,
even a thought of joy was too much—
because how could I, how could you,
dare to light the world
while seeds of darkness in us curled;
how dare we,
in our depravity,
proclaim the beauty of the truth we thought we knew?
Repression
If beauty can't be trusted, what can?
If joy measures darkness, what then is human?
I am unknowable, unseen, alone
in this darkness, these days of lonely nights,
a new monster cut from inside me, cut from brimstone cold,
formed by the pain of my abandoned pride;
oh sleep,
a cry from my deep,
I cannot see
beyond the death I keep,
death I deserve,
death I seek;
will-less to face
the shame I see in my own eyes, in my gaze.
There is nothing for me,
nowhere for my soul to be,
no heart left to flee
from myself, my monstrosity.
Rebirth
A voice speaks, now, from out of the dark,
whispering into the heart of my heart,
faint, delicate, a trick of the light
no—real?
I can't reach out,
but you know how it feels
and you reach in,
touch my hand,
and the heat is nice,
the heat is good,
as I'd known it should
be from the beginning,
before these voices filled my head,
drowned me in darkness and rumors of night,
with fear and anger and self-hatred.
Today, though I tremble to say
I feel hope, I may yet see more of that light,
one day I may stand, your hand at my side.
Freedom
I stand on my own,
by myself but not alone;
I can move, can walk, can run if I want to,
or sit, still, not in shame but in everlasting peace,
and the choice is my own, to dance or to dream—
to break or to breathe
in the daylight, in the dark,
in the twilight, in the dawn,
in the meaning I found inside me, the spark of my song.
Life
That spark, you see, was what I knew at birth,
the same love and joy I remember I treasured,
a breath of goodness I almost gave
to those thieves who said they wanted to save
my soul but lied; if not for that hand,
this beautiful hand by my side who helped me stand,
and remember the life that I am
when who I am is unrestrained, true,
returning to the world the abundant love I held for you.
Forgiveness
Love is no balm, though,
for the lies I learned to believe,
for the depravity they gave to me;
and though I learned the beauty of truth,
the truth is this: so many remain cast
inside monstrous brimstone creatures
cut by thieves, guarded by misguided teachers,
and I forgive, yes I forgive what they did to me
but I cannot forget the cancer they birthed in me.
I cannot abandon my fellow children
filled with joy and love and light;
because the world needs them to claim the life that is their birthright
their goodness within,
the beauty of their unique skin
their unique mind,
their unique soul,
and the passing of their time—
it is to them, now, I commit my life,
to lift them up and sever their ties
so they may be free and
so they may love free and
so they may claim everything
I almost had stolen from me.
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