Light In My Drakness (Rewritten) Poem by Timothy Pierce

As the day draws near, I think of what I told herhow she finds light where I bury my shadows.I wonder what hands have traced my scars, what small mercies touched the places I hide.She looks at me and calls my ruin potential; I, broken and unfinished, am revealed.

I slam my fist into a door, a cruel punctuation, then lie there asking why she stays, why she sees a lantern in the hollow of my dark.Light filters through the very black I carry; we wander the woods of our mistakes, searching for a fate not bound to exile.

Light pierces my wounded heart, caring little for what I've already become.I try to seal myself, a choice, a taking, and yet light finds what I thought dead.She sees the light in my darkness; that truth endures.

I am not as dark as I seem, not when she looks.I see the light in her the way I wish to be seen: honest, raw.I sped down life's road, headlights failing, gravel flying, and she caught me; or let me bleed into her hands.Because of her I am changed; because of her my shadow learns to bend.

The knife drops to the floor; the darkness, for a moment, contorts.I try to align with this life, breathe, and keep this small prayer: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.Not shredded by the beasts I used to be, I fold my grief into the drain and watch it go; she watches me unspool.

Hate is easy; love is harder.Stories of war, hearses, and hollow streets weigh on my chest, yet even in wreckage; a car over a cliff, a world screaming; her light stitches through, stubborn as a seam.I float toward whatever waits, whispering one message back: keep hoping.

The world tells fables of slaughter and three-headed beasts; stained glass shatters, a puck arcs cruelly.Widows learn to endure other people's wars, yet she still bends the dark with a hand I do not deserve.She sees me, she sees the light in my darkness.

So let this be my creed, ragged but true: I drink whatever holy water I can reach, not for salvation above but because she says I matter.Light and dark meet, stumble, and trade bruises, then once more the light spreads through stubborn black.

She sees the doves rise in thin bright air, and I weave a single thread of hope to answer the sin of men.I tan the hide of the beasts that once ruled me, not to claim dominion but to remember they bled.Because she sees the light within meand I, at last, return the flame.