Anesthesia seeps into me and settles
like plaque into my arteries
where it converses with my blood.
I let its ugly yellow fingers swagger through,
waving their malicious banners
proclaiming my surrender.

My lungs breathe chafing dust
that conspires
and leaves me suffocating
under the silent sands of guilt
that build up into graceful dunes.

My mind loves the desert in my lungs
despite the lifeless contours;
it is far away, removed and sees
a sweeping landscape, patterned
by the winds, my rattling breath.

But my heart lives next door
to that forsaken terrain.
It feels the pain of the parched *****,
gone unacknowledged by my mind.
It feels the lecherous caress
of the ugly yellow fingers
that violate my blood,
stroking, disgustingly, inside my veins.

Still my mind remains
Doorless
Windowless
Refusing to see.
Serenely smooth, impenetrable Reason.

My heart has no hands
to hold a hammer or a sword.

Yet Your tongue is a sword,
Your words a hammer of consciousness,
Your expression the oil to reignite
shimmering embers buried under ashes.

My mind’s shield becomes an eggshell—
it shatters, flinging shards away,
letting the newly lit inferno roar
through every capillary, burning away
the ugly yellow fingers.

Winds from within gust through my lungs,
force the desert from my chest.
The sand rends my throat and lips
in its storm of escape,
and the blissful tears that rain from my eyes
quench my arid lungs.

The fire recedes into my heart, where it burns
white-hot and pure—
My eternal sun that gleams within,
to You, I surrender.