Prologue To Poetry

If the people involved in these stories were to write what they experienced, I have no doubt they would feel and look and sound very different. These are not true stories that could be verified by God's objective eye. They are my story, my experiences. Lived, breathed and incorporated into my bones as foundations of who I am. For most of my life they have existed as stories I ran away from, dreaded and conspicuously avoided in building my own version of my life. Now they are becoming again the foundation stones that they are, informing me about who I am and what I bring to life, the pain and sorrow that pervade much of my interior. They must guide me in new directions now. For they have until now seized me up like cancer in my bones: hidden, frightening, malevolent. Present, but isolated, in consciousness, from all my desires. I have been unable to dream, unable to understand life as I struggled to live without them, yet they are prescient and rich with knowledge that I didn't care about. They will not seem so striking or severe as I make them out to be, yet they have stunted my self; marked me so that I could never forget for long their power. I come towards the end of my life in their embrace, as they demand to be given their rightful acknowledgement in my foundations. Their tone is somber, melancholy; their history colored by who I am. Yet more deeply than any other stories, they are about me. The me that I have refused to let out into my world, because I did not want these stories to end up being the truth. They are about sex and power, secrets and lies. Other truths wait this telling. 2006