My heart is in hiding, wounded and bleeding. 

Anger’s anesthesia is wearing off

and I can only get so numb,

but it’s never numb enough.  

I cannot retreat far enough

into my dark comforter’s lifeless arms. 

They no longer hold me like they once did,

no longer embrace me in the safety of shadows. 

My lovers surround me

and gaze at me with cold, empty eyes. 

Their comatose stares blank,

pupils dilated and filling their sockets. 

I run to each in turn, seeking relief,

but I am still unsatisfied, still vacant inside. 

I cry out, but my voice falls on deafened ears. 

I look, but there is no shelter.  

I reach and grope and grasp, 

but my hands remain wanting and unfilled.  

In desperation I pull on threads 

of what once was, looking for the familiar,

but find that in the end all that was before

lies there at my feet unraveled and disheveled. 

How long will I search and seek and long 

for what is dead and gone?

And where is that grace that sets men free?

Where is that mercy that rescued me?

They are not found here among the insignificant,

the barren and the broken things. 

They are not to be found where the sun has set

and the distant moon reflects dimly. 

There is no light in the realm of the dead

except the pale glow of what could have been,

that faded and waning flickering 

of potential now gone and wasted away,

rotted like corpses in open graves,

put on display as a painful reminder

of what could never more be.  

So why do my feet wonder here,

and what is it that I’m hoping to find

in this place that I so narrowly escaped?

Have I so quickly forgotten my torments?

Have I so taken the light for granted

that I have forgotten the despair of night,

that I should run back into its realm?

Here among the ruins of death and decay,

what is it that I am looking for?

Oh, how quickly my feet return to the tomb!

How readily my hands have taken up the shroud!

How willing I am to once again be enshrined

and wrapped so tightly in these grave clothes!

What is to become of me here?

What place has the living among the dead?

Have I so easily forgotten the light in me

that I should return so readily into darkness?

But I am ensnared and inept at freedom

and so return to familiarity,

consenting again to my shackles and chains. 

I put up no fight and offer no resistance. 

Oh, that my lovers would kiss me again,

that my comforter would envelop me

in icy, black nothingness where I am no more

and the darkness becomes my everything. 

I am a sheep led to the slaughter.