You don’t know me at all
if you think I am unaware
of how you feel about me —

more than slightly skittish, afraid
to confront for fear of the wash
that you suspect will come
behind it, that black wash
with flecks of crimson and
occasional white-hot pieces
of my past life magnified and
distorted and even made up
wholesale, from bitter
banner cloth;

believe me when I tell you
there was a time when I was not
this way — that there was a period
of my time here when I was different —

I do not recall it except now and then
when I am not being gnawed
by the lessons I swore I’d learned
from the weather and the coping skills
that take me a minute to see and accept —

a single second, and then it goes —
leaves its memory behind like a song,
its title unfamiliar,
its melody leaving us haunted and sad
as I bury my head in my hands
and will not look at you —

as I sit wrapped in my cloth;
as you shake your singed head.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T