Stained

As thoroughly as the water washes it away

Hope always brings it right back.

The tender mercy of death

Won’t even come to me when I ask.

I rode through a field so fast once

Upon a black horse I called perseverance.

Two animals, untamed and unbridled

Left gasping for air when it was all said and done.

Then I hung dangling off a cliff

When people would come I would scream at them to go.

Why would someone want to be saved from something

They had done to themselves?

Forgiveness is a righteous sin

Cast out so long ago, I don’t even remember it.

Yet the consequence for holding it all in

Was that it always tore me so completely apart.

A woman left a scar on my left arm once

To make it even, I cut the other arm.

Nobody gets to leave scars on me

Not without my permission anyway.

My healing came when I knelt on the ground

Begging for my salvation, and just a teeny pinch of mercy.

I was always told not to ask Heavenly Father for anything

I wasn’t willing to give myself.

When they told me not to speak to my inner demons

It suddenly occurred to me I was in the wrong place.

Everyone knows we have to get along with them

If only for the sanctity of our minds.

When I found a man I fell in love with

Asked him why, for years he didn’t want me

He looked me up and down, raised his brow

Then told me I was stained.

In a familiar reaction to his dissatisfaction

I had him quartered then fed to the pigs.

I’ve never been a woman that took criticism well

Especially from the lesser of the species.