by Liam

There is a place my soul remembers,

not with words,

but with the ringing between thunder and lightning,

where sadness once burned

a wound through my heart.

There, vengeance came first not as rage,

but as the slow agony of grief

that had no name

and I had no hand to touch it tenderly.

It carved those names into stone,

dreamt over justice with a clenched jaw,

sought the screams before silence,

blood for my unspeakable wound.

But oh, best beloved

even flame consumes its fury.

That ash longs for the wind

to lift it from the ground.

It is here the inner song begins,

soft as lark-song breaking morning frost.

Forgiveness does not forget the hurt, no

it remembers more wholly,

More vividly than with a blade.

Love is not the opposite of death, no

it is the hand holding the skull

and singing it’s soul home.

It is the courage to unbind

my own clenched fist,

Inhale the very air

that once held your enemy’s breath.

Joy does not deny the grave.

but places a flower on that stone,

not to mock the mourning

but to speak

of something still more durable

than loss.

So when the old cry returns…..

for revenge, or for reckoning,

let it find you not unprepared,

but full of this strange kindness 

grown where only pain could have come from.

And may your soul dance

In wide fields at dusk,

where fire meets the rain,

and no wind

is turned away

We will fall to dust, no sorrow and no stain,

and root our peace in the quiet morning rain.