Who Are You? Wounded (Tim Knipp)

It will never be 
the same
after pain.
How will we bend?
Loss and 
unfulfilled hope
leave craters --
sink holes --
and acquaint us
with shadows.

Hunger drives 
a woman and her family
far from home.
Death strikes 
and Naomi,
embittered,
turns homeward,
determined to
need no one
ever again.

With stalwart devotion,
wrapped in grief
of her own,
Ruth
commits herself to 
The Embittered One,
a cushion
for pain shared.

Inescapable wounds
can bind us together
or divide us;
trap us in an endless loop
or free us to face
the fragmented 
mirror;
to read the scars
like Braille,
telling the story
of God's heart,
broken for us.

Fallen creatures
are prickly
as porcupines,
the wounded often lash out
in terror,
slashing the very hand
reached down
in kindness.

We cannot escape
this world unscathed.
What story
will our scars tell? 

Ruth 1:1-5