Bitter

Bitterness, caustic fruit of chronic hurt
makes for a digestive disorder
what is most desperately desired 
can’t be taken in, but instead upsets

hurt engenders acid acuity
that  eats through pretence, sadly vitiates
pretending’s capacity to calm waves
of wild overtopping storms of worry

can hurt return from whence it came, flow backwards
in the heart of damage, find a new name
for very old pain, turn grievance to grief,
release from burnt out ash the phoenix dove?

how to nourish what was starved when it knows
it lives and it hopes at its own peril