Apology

I close the book now
thinking of pages unmarked
by words, bearing only fingerprints

to be found by others, brushing
dust over the surface,
trying to recreate what happened here.

It has not ever been enough
to write and read.  It was always
the only way I ever had

to try and make a stand
against the storm inside.
The evidence of the life I led

is not in the words:
you will need to see the blank pages
I fingered while thinking

of what I should have said
versus what I did say.
That’s where the truth sits.

I lied more than I wanted to.
I said the wrong things the right way.
I did as little as I could to survive.

To learn me
learn this: the work
was all a cloud of red.

The blue behind the cloud
was where I lived.  I close the book now
after sunset and sit back

praying that someone will see
the black dust on my oily traces and say:
here, here he was, and he was so much less than we knew.