Across The Line

I start
by drawing a line around
the things I will address.

I stare a long time
into the nest of concerns
I’ve created.

When one leaps across the line
into what I’ve forbidden myself to consider,
I know what I must do,

and there I am in mid-air
dreading the landing
and hoping I will be brave enough

to follow it wherever it leads me.
It may be a slog through
filths and scums.  It may be

an orgy with undesirables.
It may be a red road of killing
and stench of fresh flesh torn open.

It may be a quiet road
with a fence and a family 
and a good dog at the end,

with a deadening blanket to lay upon
the very desire to be there at all.
It may simply kill me at first step,

candle me in a breath,
filet me at once.  Whatever it delivers
I shall accept, though not without

a longing look
back across the line
to the place I thought I should be

and a baleful glance ahead
at what I followed
to the place I actually belonged.