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# From Birth
- URL: https://randalljgreene.com/from-birth/
- Published: 2025-07-21T01:16:27.000Z
- Updated: 2025-07-21T01:16:27.000Z
- Description: My journey from birth to shame to repression to rebirth to freedom to life to forgiveness.
- Author: Randall Greene
- Tags: Poetry, Christianity

Listen to Me Reading this Poem: "From Birth"

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## 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.