Three years in Damascus

I cannot go to Jerusalem to confer with flesh and blood
But spend three years in Damascus eating bitter herbs

The love of my father was still in my heart
In ears were full of my mother’s teaching

This family knew me because they made me
The unmaking returned to them a stranger

O they were proud
O I did excell
In all the teachings
Rhetorics and rules

O lost loves
O forgotten days
Better, I be mute
Than speak against you

But what I received now was not from man
Is it possible for feet to unwalk a road?

I call honors loss; I name fame as dust
There is one consolation I offer my loves

Take no offense at these words, but hear if you have ears
That I am becoming nothing because of Him who is all

— David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical