He'd been wounded by words
Not their utterance
But their absence
If the Word becoming flesh is salvation
Than their delayed embodiment is hell
And the father who refuses to incarnate love in language
Some kind of tormentor
Of the boy who wanted nothing more than his approval
Memories of silence torture adult-child
Long after father has grayed, lost ability to walk, stopped breathing
Death eternally forestalls those words from coming
Compounding pain upon pain
Corrie ten Boom’s words ring like that bell which must stop ringing
He listens to the deafening gong
Identifies his own paternal shortcomings
Discerns mercy that’s divinely been offered him
And in the quiet left by his father’s failed lips
He moves his own
In what at first feels more difficult than Atlas’s burden
Filling with the power of his own voice the silence
I forgive
Beeeee-yuteeful.
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