Remembering Bruce

Bruce was a gracious, tender-hearted man

Who led the church youth group with open hands,

Intent on preaching truths he thought he knew,

He built a space where boyish burdens grew.

He called us brothers, told us to be bare,

Yet never saw the trauma hiding there.

I asked for help to break a blinding vice,

But all he offered was a cheap advice:

“At least you always choose to apologize.”

He gave no cure, just shadows in his eyes.

He wept recounting when his life was young—

A absent father and a game unstrung.

Inside the locker room, he sobbed alone,

Then choked back tears to speak in holy tone:

“I know I have a daddy in the sky.”

I had my daddy issues, so did I.

He looked at me, the boundaries growing thin:

“Does he do that to you too, Jonathan?”

Then came the words that twisted up the place,

As holy talk gave way to something base.

He spoke of cravings, pornographic scenes,

And using his own wife to feed his schemes—

How many guys just want to act out lust

On girls who give them sweetness and their trust.

I broke right down in heavy, anguished cries:

“I don’t know what is happening!” I sighed.

It felt so strange, but stranded in the dark,

I asked to talk, to find a saving spark.

He sat across the crowded, wooden bunk,

Deep in a helplessness where he had sunk.

“I do not know the cure for what you face;

Endure it if God will not grant you grace.”

Little did I know that I was fed

The heavy madness of a twisted head.

I walked away and never came back in,

Once God stepped out to heal me from within.

He tracked me down, confronting me to say:

“Don’t talk to Mohammad, turn away.”

I fought him hard, but he would not relent,

To starve me of the only soul who cared,

The only one who gave me time worth spent.