The Wounds That Speak

A Poem Inspired by Isaiah 1:5-6

Why do we wander where sorrow grows,

Where the wind carries the dust of our own making?

A voice echoes through the hollow valleys of the heart,

Asking a question older than the mountains:

Why choose the path that deepens the bruise?

From the crown of the head to the weary soles,

The soul bears the map of its wandering.

Not one place untouched,

Not one quiet corner spared the ache.

Like fields long neglected,

The spirit lies open beneath a relentless sun.

Bruises bloom like dark flowers beneath the skin.

Wounds whisper beneath thin layers of denial.

Stripes tell stories written in pain,

Lines carved by choices repeated

Until the heart forgets its own softness.

The body of the land groans.

Cities tremble with silent sickness,

Roads remember the footsteps of rebellion,

And the air itself seems heavy

With the breath of regret.

Open sores remain untended.

No oil to soothe the burning skin.

No bandage to cradle the broken places.

No gentle hands to cleanse the hidden injuries.

The suffering lingers,

Raw and unspoken.

The heart pretends not to see.

Yet the wounds speak.

They speak in the quiet hours of night

When the world lowers its voice

And the truth walks softly through the rooms of memory.

They speak through the ache of consequence,

Through the restless turning of conscience,

Through the tired sigh of a spirit

That remembers what peace once felt like.

The wounds say:

You were not made for this ruin.

You were not shaped for endless hurting.

You were not formed to live beneath the weight

Of unhealed sorrow.

Somewhere beyond the fields of bruises,

Beyond the torn skin of the earth,

Beyond the questions that pierce like thorns,

There waits a hand still willing to heal.

A hand that does not turn away

From infected wounds.

A hand that is not afraid

Of the broken body of the soul.

It moves gently,

Like rain over cracked ground,

Like dawn entering a room long sealed in darkness.

It washes the dust from the wound.

It pours oil where fire once burned.

It wraps mercy around the aching places.

Slowly the bruises fade.

The stripes become reminders

Not of shame,

But of rescue.

For every wound that speaks of wandering

Can also whisper of return.

And though the body of the soul

Was once covered in sorrow,

Though from head to foot it carried pain,

Healing waits patiently

At the edge of repentance,

Like light standing at the door of morning.

The wounds spoke first.

But they will not have the final word.