Ago

it’s never … easy … letting go saying goodbye realizing that your path with someone no longer saunters to the same sanctum because you know then that you’ll never be whole again - that, whether they recognize it or not a measure of your marrow leaves with them and only ache remains … but YOU - you absconded more than just you (as if that wasn’t enough - smile, sparkling eyes, lilting voice) and that ache has resounded in me ever since then like a gong with no sound … and further - we bore another little soul and we shared the inescapable reality of how it hurt HER how it would keep doing so … always … but even that was not the entire cost for the people you loved - those closest to you - I loved, too … as my very own and I lost them ALL I split my heart I split my baby girl’s security I split my family in TWO and it broke my spirit for the most inane of reasons absurdly selfish unimaginably idiotic … and I didn’t fight for those things I held most dear … oh, heaven, speak! how precious, poetry at times like this because the course of our two lives now makes speaking my true heart impossible - makes saying ANYthing from my soul inappropriate uncomfortable and fiercely foolish … so I put it here in verse where others can only conjecture or assume it’s contrived for nostalgia’s sake where the candle glows but no one feels it’s heat … but … what is saddest of all - what makes the nights so interminable the questions so ambivalent and the throes so utterly unbearable is that I have to use this cryptic medium to express myself … that I can’t personally tell you or her or them or even my worthless self how deeply and profoundly sorry … I will always be. Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, July 2, 2023