I stopped to smell the roses & their fragrance permeates my life.

You may not linger on this path.

A choice that affects not my destination but yours

Thorns have pricked me; I lay with them and bleed

In earnest innocence to atone for my sins

I own the burden so great; why more I find myself to bare it seems too much more than I’m guilty of?

Through creases I bleed feeling so falsely accused, yet if these deeds I’ve done has brought me to this fate, endlessly shall I bleed to be forgiven no more, yet once more for it all in the end I pray, I live, I breathe to repent in hopes to be absolved.

The tears and the memories so bittersweet, the shuddering in my bones cast me into divine surrender for my life is no longer my own, for in God’s hands my mercy falls and in his grace is my hope.

My stigma and stigmata, I sit amidst the roses, on a bed of thorns, I see beauty and truth and bleed, my heart is torn, from my chest it ripped to give it all to become no more where love is not.

Written September 16, 2017, reflecting back on July 27, 2003