So.
I’ve been analysed
And diagnosed
With ‘undesirable personality disorder’
Examined for danger
And found ‘unsafe for use’
I’ve been ghosted
Labeled an ‘unperson’
Unworthy of interest
Sent to Coventry
Expunged from history
Left freezing in the blast
Of your Siberian indifference
You have averted your gaze.
Like a king,
Withdrawn your favour.
Kafkaesque
I’m left wondering
What the charges are?
And as you are planted
So firmly in moral ground
I know my sin
Must be something
Indefensible.
And so I asked for forgiveness
Not knowing the sentence
You handed down
Is non-commutable
It hadn’t struck me
Until
A heartfelt apology
Met with total silence
Only then
My self esteem
Twitched and revived.
It was still alive
And I remember
How one single turn
Burned
In an instant
Through to the bone.
Felt like a blow
I don’t know how
I got down the stairs
Reeling from it
And when I think that so few,
So very, very few
Could have inflicted
Such a wound on me
I am anguished
I gave you the power
To damage me
You see
You are wrong about me
Absolutely and completely
Did you think you saw
Some schoolgirl game
To elicit jealousy?
I’m grasping here
In hindsight
But if you think
You witnessed that
Then my soul is a stranger to you
And that constructed person
A phantom, a ghoul
As far from me
As dead dust is
From warm flesh
And I suffer I believe
For someone else’s crime
Lost in time
But colouring you still
Your own long forgotten
Heart wound
Bleeding somewhere
Deep within
An underground river
Irrigating your fears
Clouding your sight
Which in all other ways
Is so very clear.
And so
My pure well-spring is declared
Contaminated
At risk of poisoning you
When the truth is
This river is unpolluted
Its waters could heal
All old wounds
Soothe all aches away
Gently dissolve
The scar tissue
You mistakenly feel
Protects you.
It doesn’t.
It walls your heart off
From deep healing
And true friendship
Freely offered
With no strings or conditions
Do you know
How rare that is?
I do.
All I’m guilty of
Is being human
And that too
Is all you’re guilty of.
For all our moral strength –
And we do know so well
What’s right
And what’s wrong
With this world
And we both despise
The lies
Hypocrisy
Lack of integrity,
And our rightful anger
Burns
With the same
Blue-white flame –
We are still, after all
Human.
Who knew?
I do need your forgiveness
For expressing my hurt
In any way that hurt you.
But you also need mine.
Even though you don’t want it
I give it anyway
And when I see you
As I surely will
I won’t feel
I can’t look you in the eye
Or even say hello
And it will mean by then
Nothing more than that.
Alison Banville is co-editor of BSNews
