Am I Forgiven? Poem by Arthur H Rowley

I spent years imitating cruelty in the name of personal growth,
and yet this mind still shames its own audacity
for having allowed this pain to create a kindness out of me.

Is my self retribution not enough? Am I now not stronger?
Am I not the silver beneath the copper painted coin?

I have inhabited this new body for the past few weeks, focused entirely on the machinery within it.
Wrist joints crackling beneath skin,
eyelids flickering while pinned beneath the loyal gaze of plastered ceiling,
sternum stood stoic beneath a tribunal of cells.
I have simmered this creature to a science.

Ashamed, I pray it does not realise that I am the hostile home invader,
come to strip the walls from their pipes
and peel back the floorboards in honour of the foundations laying within.

How can we find peace?
How can we know if we hold the rights to freedom beneath our fingernails?
How do we forgive ourselves for all we are yet to destroy?