Blood My Freedom Won

This is a poem from Blood’s Power: Broken

BLOOD MY FREEDOM WON,

BLOOD MY HANDS HAD SHED

Of shame I’ve been made free through my own greatest folly, my spirit born again upon this side of death.

When from me my power was taken, ripped ruthlessly from my hands, I sought to gain it back, by any means to any price, with a ruthlessness my defeaters never stooped to wield.

I would not bear the shame to be defeated.

I was master, and I would make myself mighty that I might rightfully reclaim my name and power.

For all I called right was that power should be mine.

Therefore as I swore I would make full, if not my power I would rob another’s power and make his power mine.

I knew the arts of blood, the power won through pain and suffering, so I sought victims helpless to take my power from the suffering I would ruthlessly inflict to regain what I called my right and power, to undo all my shame and make me master again.

In the chains of my power the healer stood helpless. I feared him not for his nature was healer and he could not harm me, yet in his blood was the power of magic so greater would be the power I gained through his life now at my disposal.

I gloated in victory, triumph unholy, the healer now wounded by my own hands, his blood my power, his suffering my triumph.

Helpless he was bound, by the might of my spell, to suffer for my power, for his nature was healer and he could not fight me.

Alas I am haunted. My own self has been taken from me. The personhood of him I’ve slain now haunts my mind and soul.

The healer now dead, by my own hands slain, yet his blood is power now living in me.

Where I sought to gain, I lost all that I am. The one I have slain now lives in me. I feel his will and not my own. My thoughts are his and not my own, for he speaks within my body and his voice is death to me.

I have no place to flee. Alas I am defeated. I fall weeping for all that I’ve lost, not only my power but my very self.

When I came to an exhaustion I could fight no longer and was forced to hear the words of the healer I’d slain, he said to me, with a gentleness beyond his living words and warnings, “I do not haunt you. I do not take from you yourself. That was what you tried to do to me, and I would never do so to you. It is you who keep me here, you who keep me in your mind, for you have killed me and yet held the power of my blood in this world, and for I am the Healer’s I can surrender my blood only to be healing. My blood is my power whether in living or in death. But you have killed me and tried to make my blood your power. Either let me free to die and leave this world, or bear the power of my blood in your own hands, yet as my power, be my friend that we might blend in power, not in person. I have only shown you what you have done to me. I take nothing from you.”

I was a child again, watching the sunrise, freed from the fears that power had rooted so deeply in me that I thought they were my very personhood.

Now I knew that power and fear, not the healer, had taken from me my very self, that I myself had taken myself from me, and through love and gentleness, through his blood which my own hands had shed, the healer had told me of the path of light where fear is cast out in childlike happiness.

For all the pain of my past, all that had shown me the path of shame and led me to follow that way, I was happy to be a child again, to be myself again, and I feared the healer no more, though alas he had power over me no other could have.

Yet it was long til the day I spent the power of his blood, and of mine, til the day my blood was mixed with his for a people who knew not of my sacrifice and never would know what I have become, but alas my spirit is free, and the healer my friend.

I count it of little that my blood be freely shed. For my hands willing have wielded my power beyond life, and death claims me to give me new birth again.

Blood my freedom won, blood my hands had shed. Blood of my soul’s new birth, blood of my destined death.