PAINT ME A PICTURE.

The tattoo artist drew her needle across my skin in a slow steady manner and thoughtful art.

I lay curled up in my mind waiting for the pain of its imprint.

Slowly... Stealthily, the line appeared on my wrist.

The little spurt eased the pain in my heart and I watched my blood, flow...

I looked at the tattoo artist, and shivered at the instrument she held.

While I hid in my cowardly nest, she exchanged the needle for a blade...

the spindle with its prick, stung my skin with its nick, and made the jumpy heartbeat of mine, tick ...

Label me no more the thoughts you envision, and the words you spew.

Oh! The red against the white of my pale skin.

Injury, bleeding for help, crying for attention.

The line that the blade spurt broke the vein that pumps to my heart.. My heart that once bloomed red with life, now bleaks the colour of pale-green, blood- none.

The tattoo artist jumped, "What have i done?" She asked, but that didn't stop it from marking my skin again and again until my left hand was a canvass of pain.

I drew my shirt to cover my arm, and forced my teeth to sparkle its white, outside the door.

Indoors, my hand called up to my heart, which struggled to grasp life's obscure reality.

"Where was your spirit, heart?

"Where was your spirit when the tattoo artist tied me down and drew her black art on me? 

Why didn't you stop her?" My left hand cried.

My heart was perplexed.

She was drawn between the victimized East and confused West, both were  lost and broken tools in the hands of the tattoo artist.

I am in the tattoo parlor again, but this time i'm skeptic. 

the table wasn't lined with its usual assemble of needles, blades and pain. Instead, the table boasted of a huge glittery knife.

I shook my head slowly at the artist.

She beckoned my advance.

I stopped my feet from stepping into the quicksand of her temptation.

"Come.." The voice ordered, releasing a gust of wind like the tale told of storms. I felt its whorl, whirl me into the complacency of its judgement.

I had been accused, prosecuted and judged while i struggled beneath my quilt of horror, trying to drown her screams in the permeable foam of my pillow. I screamed till my voice became hollow. 

I guess the indelible marks cannot be covered with the mask of Zoror. 

A warior like the legend, I'd imagined myself to be. Tearing

down walls and lifting my ready sword up, with my battle cry cutting down trees and felling my enemies, like the hero of fairy-tales sung in the moonlight.

The stars had dwindled its sparkle, and I'm a bit complacent to the inevitable axe above my neck. 

"Who are you?" I gathered my diminishing strength and blurted out my last words.

I am You!" She replied.

A thousand years went by as I stood transfixed in my bewilderment.

I walked to the mirror and stared at the image it presented.

I was staring at a typical meme with a scary catchphrase.

Astonished, I look at my right hand and it cried into my tears: Oh so broken were the marks criss-crossing along its expanse.

They looked black like the mark of a pencil, but dreadful like the slice of judgement, That when I realized, I'd always been the tattoo artist.

I was the wicked one i dreaded. 

I'd painted my face the colour of the walking dead. 

I'd let labels bury me under the weight of its lies. 

I'd let the abuse of time and wrong places hustle and bustle my life into the consistency of bumpy rides on a forgotten amusement park. 

Paint me a picture of deject and stick it to the string of labels that have been attached to my personality.

I was sorrow stuck in the continuous horror of never ending grieve, and I'd let my spirit suffer from the selfishness of my pain.

I stumbled out of the tattoo parlor into a path that boasted of rocks and the quintessential hard place which was ludicrous in its placement, but apt in its timing.

The bleeding of my feet as the rocks pricked its beneath could hardly stop my flight towards the freedom I saw beckon me  yonder.

I stopped as abruptly as shock does, in a bid to absorb the sight before my eyes.

The cross on the hill shocked my scattered mind into the tumble of memory that i'd never lived.

I saw, I heard, I felt, and I fell.

My knees folded to hit the ground, and the weight of pain I'd carried for times and seasons pulled my heavy soul down below the scattering of dust above the earth.

His skin glittered with wounds that resembled my heart's sores, and his hand bore piercings that characterized my shattered soul.

They beckoned to my abjectness, "Come and i'll give you rest"

His arms spread across my brokenness and engulfed my disintegrated past.

Paint me a picture of the slain, and let the unfairness of HIS arraign, so appropriately planned, wipe away the guilt of my pain.

What fortune lies beyond the stars
Those dazzling heights too vast to climb
I got so high to fall so far
But I found heaven as love swept low

My heart beating, my soul breathing
I found my life when I laid it down
Upward falling, spirit soaring
I touch the sky when my knees hit the ground

What treasure waits within Your scars
The gift of freedom gold can't buy
I bought the world and sold my heart
You traded heaven to have me again

My heart beating, my soul breathing
I found my life when I laid it down
Upward falling, spirit soaring
I touch the sky when my knees hit the ground

Find me here at Your feet again
Everything I am, reaching out, I surrender
Come sweep me up in Your love again
And my soul will dance
On the wings of forever- HILLSONG