Sin - A poem by a guest blogger

This poem was submitted by guest blogger

By Terri Turrell

You used to be a silent, deadly ill;
black cancer cells embedded in my brain.
An aneurysm guaranteed to kill;
death by degrees, but then I was insane.
The brainwashed bride who trusted, so intense.
Your claim I was to blame made perfect sense.

Perfection loses weight and flutters hands,
grows apprehensive, darting eyes, tense face.
Accepting fault holds hands with understands,
to disagree is not perfection's place.
Examples underline, force feed, conceives.
Perfection fails again, Bad Bride believes.

Your cancer crawled beneath my flesh and fed
like maggots crawling underneath my skin,
the Bastard's Bride; by then already dead,
agreed she should be punished for her sin.
Malignant greedy tumors need to eat;
how sick is that? The Perfect Wife looks beat.

Incised by knife, sliced life and death away,
the Bride escapes and everybody cheers.
Twenty years of nightmares, night and day.
She screams alone but everybody hears.
Love comes and goes, but never trust. Twice fooled ?
The cancer's gone, but she remains well-schooled.

Gravestones graze my fingers as they tilt,
my wings pinned by the sharp rap - rapping knock.
And I these many years consumed by guilt,
can smell your cancer long before you talk.
How odd, I find no time to let you in.
The Blushing Bride goes by the name of Sin.

The graveyard soil clings damp upon my face,
so many years I've lived as though I'd died.
Today I'm finally cured, let life replace
the maggots that no longer grow inside.
I forward your new letters, all unread,
to a folder I named "Spiders" in my head.

No bitter pill, no fear, no power yours;
I trust, I love, I laugh, look Ma, no scars !!
And you stuck in a room with spidie spoors;
But I don't need no specimens in jars,
It's not revenge that makes this moment sweet,
but life itself, the challenge that I meet.

The work was originally posted online two years ago. The author submitted the poem here to help reach other survivors. Would you like to blog in support of other survivors? Find out more about the work that we welcome from guest bloggers.