1.  Me in All My Wrongness

How many "I'd nevers" do we need

to say until we feel better about all

the things we swear we'd never do?

But it's an intense dark in your heart

when the voice that knows you best

is the voice that loves you least.

I lived a mile at a time in the dank

recesses of my brain, hand against

cheek, head against wall,

reverberations of skull against

the hardness of this world, eyes

closed to the next.

And what that voice dared to say–

my life not worth living, my being

not worth loving–the very essence of all

the wrong bottled up inside my

small, impressionable brain.

But who other than someone living

forty days in the desert–same voice,

same dark, and the uncanny ability

to find the exit out of any lie–could

find me in all my wrongness and lay

it bare at the foot of His cross so I

could finally know the truth?