Oh, he was broken and then he was lost. And maybe he is forever both, and though none would claim him he became his own man, rising from ash, from life blistered in fury and bedlam. Lawlessness. Recklessness. A heart wrought with tragedy. A bull in his wildness, a poet in his passion. Working to combine the two, a way to bring unity to himself, his life, his loves. After catering a ruthless attempt to prove himself he fell in love not unlike he often does, this time with the idea of being whole. He glances back at his legacy and sees the wake, like the one he was dragged though and in the pain of his past he demands a new future. A new face in the mirror. You look straight ahead because you don’t recognize your face on both sides.

How does a man know how to be a man? How does a boy learn? Of oppression and demand, a push-pull tension in a tug-of-war life, he comes through alive if he’s lucky. Refusing life support as men do, a boy heals as boys do, and if he is luckier still he acknowledges God in this. And so you did. And what does God change a man if he is but a wayward boy in love with passion? Chaos by all standards. God paves a path that only a bull can run. Expansive and opportune, a chaotic man’s hope. And God writes a poem of your life. Rhymes and rhythms that only make sense to prophets and lovers of romance. Such cadence is the end-of-war song. And you pour and pour in an effort to be empty and filled with what makes a man a man. You’re unsure but you empty still, all that hasn’t brought you closer to your God. And God writes and writes like a madman in love, a love understood by only two. A grown man learns to read a love story, one line at a time.

And like a bull born new, you stumble shamelessly over feet. Excitement and eagerness, head over feet. You run into things and fear you’ll never learn- how to behave, how to meet expectations, how to walk. With resilience like a child you raise your head, surveying the damage, and timidly but surely you place one foot in front of the other. Bridges burned don’t unburn even for a man who says he’s sorry. You wield apologies that don’t repair broken things, simply acknowledging the broken. And with the tenderness you could never be free of, the gentleness of a much less damaged person, you pick up broken pieces and whisper your apologies relentless. You accept with a heavy heart that broken things are broken and you are sorry still. You bandage your bruised prayer knees at night when you’re alone, when a man feels like a boy again. A fatherless boy afraid of fathers, born of a woman undone, and you wonder who you’ll be when you arrive at the end. You sing your end-of-war song; the sound of surrender and the hope of victory.