Awakening
I pray not for the destruction of the wicked, but for their hearts.
Hear me, Creator of Souls, abandon me not in the darkness.
Even when my voice is broken, you are nearer to me than my own heart.
But now the wicked are encircling me. Their shadows looming like a winter storm.
They have taken my voice, leaving me with only the faint echo of my own breath.
The air has frozen now, heavy as lead, pressing down on my lungs. The cold suffocates the warmth of hope.
Yet in this desolate silence, a melody emerges.
This desert flute sings my prayers like the last embers of a dying fire.
It carries them to places untouched by human feet, beyond the valley of the shadow of death.
I pray not for the destruction of the wicked, but for their hearts.
May your justice strike like lightning.
Awakening from these ashes, a love that burns their frozen hearts.
This poem is one of three reflections I wrote for Drew D. West’s Sunday Poems.