Prayer

Teach me to walk away:
from what hurts me,
where I am not needed,
where I intrude,
where I am but shadow,
where I cause pain.

Teach me to turn my back
on the wait for what will never come.

Teach me to accept
what will never be.

Teach me to remember
what it feels like to be abandoned,
how it is to look down on myself,
what the self looks like in the mirror
of doubt and loneliness.

I have forgotten;
teach me again.

I thrash around my self-made net
of misery, my hands bleeding
from holding on--
Teach me to let go.

Teach me.