The Lady In Black Poem by Kelsey Clark

Today I saw a Lady in Black.
She wore dish rags on her head,
wrung out to dry and left to rot in the city streets,
and metal chains that kept her captive in this
Hell.

She asked me for help, begging me to dropp loose change into her tired hands.
Her eyes, precious and worn down by addiction,
reached into my soul
trying to take hold of my heart.

And my heart throbbed.
In that moment I wanted to succumb and in the same moment run away.
I knew what suffering was
but I also knew how much I feared it.

All I could say was sorry, because I did not have anything.
But this was a lie, for I had much more than change.
Had I not been freed from the dreadful death
that I was sentenced to at birth and given hope of a better life?

Oh how I hated myself and my lack of compassion.
Regret was beginning to stain my heart a dark purple;
the kind of purple that eats away at the conscience, threatening
to unmask its true identity.

You know, lady in black, our identities were once the same.
We were both slaves bound in chains,
with hair like rotting dish rags.
The only difference is one of us has experienced the love of One who can free us.

This love in contagious, spreading through fingers, air, and spoken words.
It only takes a second for this love to take hold of a life,
and when it does, it can bring light to the dimmest of eyes.
My heart breaks for this lost soul, a candle with no match, my friend
The Lady in Black.