The Cedarville Review 2020

POETRY | 27 in every moment where you make me feel like some cast-off corpse of stale decay— some torn-up thing — My election is sure and I elect to tell you that plainly. Dear disappointment, we both know I am cyclically riddled with spasms of agony, and you will rip my heart out without fail as I lie chained like Prometheus, but you cannot eat my soul in the secret place. Diagnosis, dearth, death—I will not often lift my head like this, rebellious, neck glistening with victorious effort— but even when I do not, even as you consume my life and rip my flesh with your teeth, years mangled— the dormant citizen of imminent newness in me will remain untouched. Yes, every time I break down and lose myself again, my God will not lose me, and neither I nor His angels need rebuke you— you can control me but never own me, and the stench of the torture you anoint me with is a pleasant fragrance to my Healer.