A WORD THAT ERASED ALL WRONGS
Poem By: Billy Alsbrooks
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There was a word
A word in search of a woman
But that woman fell
Fell for all the wrong sentences,
Repeated the same mundane paragraphs,
And choked on her most regretful chapters
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You could tell
Sense it in her run-ons
Taste it in her prose
That she never fully knew her worth
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Yet there was a word
A word in search of a woman
But that woman was blind
Blind to the beauty in her own story
For every man she knew beat the love out of her
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Even in the rain
Even in the rain she wore a truth
A truth so difficult it felt like violence
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Her seasons complicated
Her days malicious
Yet the soul in her music
The soundtrack underneath
Still had a dash of hope in it
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She brushed her hair with dreams
Dreams of one day finding the arms of safety
A phrase of forgiveness
A line where she could finally exhale
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Unaware of who could direct her movie
She anchored her mistakes
Played her role as victim
Bathed in her failures
Unsure if anyone
Anyone could ever see past her brokenness
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Yet there was a word
A word in search of a woman
Undeterred by her elusiveness
He was determined to find her
For he too was wounded
Abandoned
Trapped within a book of betrayal
And only she
Only she could rewrite his story
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You could tell
Sense it in his conjunctions
Taste it in his prose
That he never fully knew his worth
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Yet there was a word
A word in search of the two of them
A word that would bring them both together
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Forever
Forever their stanzas would birth a strange cadence
And their mouths sing a new song
They would become a poem full of burning rhythms
Rhythms that rested with a word that erased all wrongs
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There was a word
A word in search of the two of them
Yes
There was a word
A word that would erase all wrongs
And that word, eventually found them
And that word, eventually found them
What was it?
