New Test Leper

Burning like battery acid – this anger within my veins, my vena cava, my left ventricle.  Even with all of the forgiveness and “lest not ye, lest ye” I am quiet rage, restrained but lusting for vengeance.  How can he not care one iota about his son?  More than two weeks of radio silence now, but he’s been spotted, bedraggled, but alive, still in town.  I tried to be optimistic earlier, but now I feel like the walls are towering and pressing, no hope to escape the pit or the pendulum this time.  I’m just trying to hold it together, trying not to let myself become fear or panic, trying to subsist.  Yet man or woman, there’s no survival on bread alone. 

But where does the sinner’s prayer rank among the cries of the needy?  What just do I deserve?  Any?  The mistakes I’ve made, I’ll pay for in blood, in loss, in tragedy, in my worldly possessions, in my freedom.  I cry Lord save our ship, but the SOS distress call come too little, too late.  Lord, save my ship:  these waves too big, so no rowing or treading will save, only drowning, lungs filling, my alveoli bathed in sea water, chlorides choking, no breath, no more.