Before This

you were always golden
untouched, untried
inviolate
but now comes the trying hour
in a furnace
that will sublimate
all your poor excuses
releasing unnecessary
elaborations
into the heavy air–
the heat resolving you
until you are
ductile, molten
tempered and annealed
broken and healed
taken down to your
naked singularity–
and I can see you melting
eyes closed
hand laid gently open
against your chest
surrendering
to transformation
in the crucible of pain