Forgive Me
My heart tells me you are here;
Although a tortured memory of black and red.
Like a splash of ink left on a blank page,
You are alone and strange there;
But you make the scroll something new and different altogether.
No sound do you make,
No complaint, no laugh, no tears, no sign
That your heart is broken, divided, and hollow.
You sink into the script, a darkened blot, your name etched out in letters of hate.
And quickly, someone lights a match and you go up in words of fire.
The rain soaked and battered you,
Feet sent you deep into the mud, crushed and broken.
The wind caught the pieces and whirled them away
Like the leaves that dance high in a sudden storm,
Sent far and wide, never to return.
If I could, I would have kept you, safe at home;
In a glass case, like the treasured painting of a great artist.
But before I could, someone burned you,
Laughingly scattering your ashes to the four winds.
Your worth was all but forgotten by everyone. Except me.
A lifetime is all I have, but I would gladly give it
To restoring you to your rightful place.
Catching the torn shreds of a shattered past,
I would hope to make the manuscript whole again;
Although the charred and jagged edges of the scars would still remain
Behind the concealment of your stiffened mask of self-justice,
Tears of blood fall from your pain-glazed eyes.
My dearest friend and truest lover, that I so long hated;
Now I understand your battles and the reasons that went with them.
And I don't understand how I was ever worth it.