Gratitude

A Douleur Exquise laden self

Has blurred my vision for some time now

On the beauty of the exterior world

Which I have always taken for granted 

I didn't realize how physiology could affect psychology 

Until I replaced shallow breaths for deeper ones

I didn't appreciate how essential water is to life

Until I swam in the Gulf Sea feeling like my throat might be slit from the burning brine

Ive always resented metropolitanism in the city

Until yesterday, when I strolled along the corniche, lecture notes in hand, marveling at how far Man has come

That these very edifices that we loathe for breeding consumerism 

Are also the enduring symbol of unwavering drive and ambition mankind possesses 

I didn't necessarily value modernity and how easy daily life has gotten

Until my grandmother told the story of how a midwife ripped open her cervix sans anesthesia 

To make room for her first newborn 

Then proceeded to pour hard liquor over her diffuse and vascular wound so it wouldn't fester 

All of this, while she was fully conscious

And yet...

I greet each day the same 

Dear Lord, thank you for blessing me with all the following that you defiantly condemn: 

Thank You for bestowing upon me belief in Your omnipotence 

Simultaneously coupled with a greater tendency to deviate from Your doctrine 

Thank You for heightening my senses to such an acute degree 

That the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to find a suitable mold

To accommodate my disproportionate pieces 

Thank You for the ability to tell the good apart from the evil

Only to predispose me to the rolling dices of ill-intention and desire to harm another person 

Thank You for the gift of autonomy and self-governance 

Yet having every decision and every action devoid of Divine intervention 

Thank You for the abundance of acquaintances and friends and family

With a cave's echo of resonant loneliness 

Thank You for the overflowing capacity to love

With no one to love

Thank You for my somewhat physically attractive veneer

To repress all the insecurities, the batshit crazy, and most of all the hollow lack of self-dignity 

Thank You for stealing my father away from me when I was 7

That in my frantic search for another man to take his place 

I placed worthless pieces of shit on a paternal pedestal

So they had no choice but to look down on me

Lastly, thank You for laying me down to sleep every night

And making sure, that every damn day, I am still alive

Breathing

Waking up as the reflection of an infernal demoness

Donning a mask of cherubic innocence

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

This is how I was created

And this is how to Him I shall return.