“Relieve me of the bondage of self…”*
Those words
crash through my heart
and thud like a boulder
in the center of my gut.
It’s a heavy burden to know
that I’m the problem,
chained to my
self,
a slave to my
self.
The hideousness of it
wears on me
until I pray again
“relieve me of the bondage of self…”
and this time
I trust
the Listener.

*With credit to Bill W.’s “Third Step Prayer,” first printed in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 63