When dark, melancholy thoughts shoulder their way into the peaceful hours of my day, unasked and unwelcome as ever, what will I do? Will I, with a compliant, resigned sigh, once again give them free rein over my consciousness?  

Why do I permit them to dampen and darken the brightness of my existence? Who sent for them in the first place? What evil permits these imps of half-forgotten, carefully buried events to wriggle free from their mental shackles and insinuate themselves back into my waking dreams?  

Are the impressions left by long ago grisly events scored so deeply on the cloistered recesses of my ego, the secret, inner, private Me, that the scars will never fade? Surgeons can remove old scar tissue; is there no psychical scalpel that can excise the abused mental fibers whose imperfect healing twists my thoughts and stifles my happiness?  

Or will icy, unseen, unshed tears continue to drip down into an all-too receptive reservoir in my suffering soul until it overflows and I drown in my own sorrow? Why am I burdened with such grievous guilt?

God – I do not deserve this!

© Thurman P. Woodfork
10/23/2008

Awarded 10/23/2008

Awarded 10/23/2008