This time, it is different,

No longer does it gnaw at my heart with the monotonous ache,

The pounding of heart is amiss, the fires that lit the spirit lie slovenly in the dying embers,

The shadows this time are larger,

Oft I traversed the path of the fires that I lit,

This time it traverses me, slowly in hiding, between the dull flickers,

This sickness, my nausea doesn’t permit me even the martyr’s song nor the simmering shame of the guilt,

I can’t even light up my world, burn into bright light of all consuming despair,

It isn’t active like the volcano that pulls the ashen pain from the womb of the earth,

and throw it in the face of the world,

My pain lies frozen, hiding between the embers that refuse to die.

My eyes are tired, the dull fever is coming now,

My refusal to meet his gaze is wearing me down,

He refuses to go away, my sense of self,

The chisel head carved some beautiful lines on the virgin,

oft we carved it together, the image of pity, of sacrifice,

Of the one who bore the son of God. We ceaselessly tore the space away from the shape that we held,

The castaways still hurt my feet.

A castaway of my own being, I am.