It's the metallic taste of blood after the final loss in a furious struggle with your inner man.
Anxiousness chewed your cheeks through
until you'd exhausted every plausible outcome
and not one of them appeared to meet the end you had hoped for.
So now, hopes shattered,
the pieces dancing away before your eyes with the ever changing winds,
you have found yourself in a deep chasm
unable to grasp even a shard of light.

Traces of cold, bitter earth are on your tongue,
leaving your mouth moist but longing for fluids
to remove the growing clod
of it's grievous matter from the back of your throat.
But no amount of water can get rid of the taste of your dreams and hopes raped by reality,
leaving a bloody, bitter, earthen taste of the grave you now lie in.

Yet, in the midst of this,
a still, small voice arises from the ash whispering
new mercies for unutterable acts and anxious failures.
A voice that will not be quieted,
it will not be restrained
and draws you in with it's promise of hope once deferred
now seemingly attainable.
This taste is one that was unforeseen,
unfamiliar to that of the grave
yet strangely similar.
A death of self, to find new life.
A noiseless rustling of promise for renewal within a heart once dead.
Nail scarred hands whose power far outweighs that of your own marred flesh.
God and man, by that of the name of Christ
delivers an understanding of depraved flesh
now given a taste that is palpably sweet and balanced
as that of a ripe grape from just off the vine.
The dead raised to life, by the blood of a perfect sacrifice.
And this scent you know, for the taste of your own blood bidden by ruthless, self inflicted means.
A righteousness not gained by good intent,
but given and clothed by another.
The failures and hopelessness of old
removed from your heavy frame,
and replaced by the love and assurance of perfection in a sinless world
that will one day come.
For now your eyes set,
not on your own former filthy hands,
but upon the eyes of the one who bore you out of the grave you had once owned,
and once sought.