![\"PURE](\"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/PURE.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nListen: living
\nis what I want to talk about.<\/p>\n
When my struggles ended,
\nI simply walked down
\na newly opened path.<\/p>\n
I saw the sun,
\nbuilding gold and true.<\/p>\n
Survival brings guilt
\nwhen so many go dark.<\/p>\n
But I knew that
\nmy spirit would not fly off,
\nthe black earth would not consume me.
\nI saw grasshoppers flitting greenly at my feet,
\nI saw a cardinal dressed in its reds,
\nwatching to see what I would do next.<\/p>\n
In the exact center of my body
\nthere was fire, an irrepressible flame:
\nfuel, not damage,
\npure, no ashes.<\/p>\n
Marcia Trahan is the author of\u00a0Mercy: A Memoir of Medical Trauma and True Crime Obsession<\/i>\u00a0(Barrelhouse Books). Her essays and poetry have appeared in\u00a0HuffPost<\/i>,\u00a0Two Hawks Quarterly<\/i>,\u00a0Wild Roof Journal<\/i>,\u00a0Cloudbank<\/i>,\u00a0The Rumpus<\/i>,\u00a0Catapult<\/i>, the\u00a0Brevity<\/i>\u00a0Blog,\u00a0Fourth Genre<\/i>, and other publications. Marcia works as a freelance book editor and holds an MFA from Bennington College. To learn more, visit\u00a0www.marciatrahan.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Marcia Trahan is the author of\u00a0Mercy: A Memoir of Medical Trauma and True Crime Obsession\u00a0(Barrelhouse Books). Her essays and poetry have appeared in\u00a0HuffPost,\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contemporary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t