Page 11 - A Qualified Acceptance of Sorrow

What if you

What if you, too, would hate me if you knew this small body contains a reservoir of resentment

as large as Lake Okeechobee; reaches ocean trench depths of anger?

What if you, also, despised me, describing me as a hypocrite –

thinking I’m an impostor even if it is true that I’m complicated, too...

Will you hold the mirror that reflects me in my most undesirable light?

Will I be your metaphor of failure?

Will you pierce my Achillean heart,

the only part of me not submerged in the hateful river separating life from death?

Do you doubt – or believing, mock – my sensitivity

to foods, to the random flotsam of negative psychic energy?

As much as I love you,

are you better off living in another country, across the waters?

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Published in Vallum 16:2 “Fear”, 2019