Why God? Why?
Turn of knife, churn of screw
All my life, each hour through?
Every pulse a knot in the stomach.
Fear and shaking.
All giving,
No taking.

I was my own Prometheus,
Played with fire and was burned.
Chained to my rock I lived
And cried and learned.

Why God? Why?
Never cried
As a child,
Except in anger as children do,
But not in pain.
Why now?

Why do I shiver in heated rooms?
Why do I roll in tear-soaked sheets?
Why do I whine
Against the night?

Every moment
I am aware—
Why God? Why?
Of things I coat with sugar against the hurt?
Then comes the force that strips the gut-spine bare
And shows, across dark fabric, anatomies of despair.