Friday, March 23, 2012

On forgiveness being the greatest gift one being can give another.


________: Friendship with you is a precarious thing.

You are mistaken in thinking
that your simmering anger
makes you strong.
You are wrong in concluding
that your fistful of grudges against her
honors your dead father.

She wronged you once years ago
and you have wronged her every day since
with cold stares from your dark eyes
or worse, by pretending she isn’t there at all.

You have frozen her in time.
Cold and blue,
she cannot move or change or grow.
She is a fossil of the girl she was,
a museum artifact inside a glassy case.

Don’t touch.

But time does not freeze selectively, _______.
If in your mind she will always be the same,
then your thoughts about her will always be the same
then your actions toward her will always be the same
[and what are we but our actions?]
So you, ________, will always be the same.

You are an icy figure,
and your ice has begun to look like stone.
If you don’t melt soon,
you will weather and disappear into dust.

Angry dust.

Yes, forgiveness is a surrender.
But your unsinkable resentment is not a victory.
Life doesn’t work like that.

I wish I knew you before,
it’s hard to know you now.

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