Art of Forgiveness by JJ

The art of forgiveness never resonated with me, until an arch enemy of animosity reared its vile head at me. Turning me off the darkened path of resentment....and, weaving me into a wheel of divine exoneration.

But this conceptual framework did not come so easy for me. THIRTY years I spent weighted by emotion...ANCHORED to anger like a steel cable. My heart was heavy like granite...falling through my center...lodging itself in a perpetual state of loathing. My force is cemented in the past. My identity has fallen off the pedestal of my future...PUSHED by the tongue of an angry grandmother...dissatisfied by her line of succession. TOSSED by the fists of a father full of contentment and shame and SHOVED by myself...the most brutal of them all. Forgiveness I never understood...holding a grudge, that, I mastered.

Piercing the womb of a child. Unfolding her flesh. Strapping wings on her back...propelling her into adulthood. Too young, too weak to fly. Pinching of flesh on hips on cheeks. Monitored meals and denial of bedtime snacks. MOCKERY at a figure that is curvy and full of life...tormented and tortured. Nights rocking myself to sleep to a lullaby only my ears can hear. With so much destruction, who holds the power to grant clemency?

Over time my earth spins off its axle...disturbing the ebb and flow of all things crude and pure. A river inside me forks...my emotions split and flow away from my core, leaving me abandoned from myself. I bury my memories beneath the soles of my feet so I may stomp them dead 1000 x's...and there, there...my soul went sour.

No longer able to BARE this pungent and foul odor of hollowness and vacancy, I awaken the anima...the SHE that always was and always will be. The biblical notion of an eye for an eye has left me blinded to my own image. Seeing myself, distorted, contorted, and shattered. And...living under the premise of a tooth for a tooth has done nothing but alter my speech and leave my message twisted and wrenched.

I had become the image of my enemy...full of blame. A prisoner of pain and fear...shackled and muted by convenience. So...naked and raw I climb a tower of absolution. Purging myself of the story that was told to me NOT written for me.
With retrospective sympathetic affection...I...traverse the boundary between justice and revenge to nestle in a place of forgiveness. I perch my dreams upon that pedestal of futurity...while I stand, HERE...NOW...heart beating in a pool of emotion...clean and clear. Mind open and breathing in prosperity.