A Hindsight Full of Maybes
I am thirsty and you cannot explain away the fact that you know my name. So, pay attention, if you will as I sift through the sands of time… that you’ve made into mud, my dear family. Sit down, have a drink of tea with me.
Perhaps one day your name will be spoken but it won’t matter, at least not until you will allow it to be heard.
It’s a funny thing to think about the small moments of others people’s lives that have touched MY LIFE even if those other people never knew it.
Sometimes I wonder whose lives I touched and didn’t know it. Sometimes I care. Other times I don’t.
The sounds of sweet laughter can fill a room much faster than the confessions of those in pain. The noise of other people’s bliss gives discomfort in your incensed mind…beware, mother…selfishness brings oppression.
Do you hear my dreams? Why do i only have bad dreams? My words ease the burden of secrets that I keep and living each day is not living in my Eden, for I cannot bloom beneath thorns of dying roses.. so I ask each of the gardeners who offered me only barren seeds simply –
Why? & you…?
While standing on this road do your legs ever feel weak? In a stupor, I’d say you’re all lying.
How wonderful it must be to know the pride of a birth family that hangs a picture on the wall.
Mine is torn
The heavy frame pulled the nail from the wall.
The portrait that was seen only in the mind’s eye of a child.
That child’s wishes have been replaced with adult’s grief.
Still, its no matter when they took my portrait; after all… they were only my wishes. What matters is who erased the family from my wall.
(Is this the point where I thank you all?)
My memory is out of order, I had wished you had hung around me a bit more …
but I understand
(You were too busy, having your own families to care for)
I never asked and you did not want to know.
The more you knew – the less I grew…
You were only creating insecurities for my dumb ass.
You amaze me so I replay each of the childhood nights (as best I can);I have to double-check the accuracy, verify because of so many lies you told me…
I’m always looking for the life-altering moments and finally I found out when it happened, I must have been sleeping cuz I missed it.
I’ve never been so damn self-respected and confused at the same time I’m afraid It was only a glass of tea that an Angel served me that day but Daddy forgot by the end of lunch.
I felt the love growing and I knew the secrets. Now I know the truth.
I’m scared to fucking death.
Is it too late to break the ties?
Too late to try to understand the advice that I should “chill” that when the time is right, I would “simply just know?”
Its time now to go along, quarter past 8.
Dreading my busy day and its not even 9…
Sick and tired of pride worth more than the time I worked so hard for what I call mine.
I am wondering now what’s next on this long trip through life.
I guess If I knew than I would not be here right now to wonder.
Had I known the end, I would not have been there in the beginning.
(Yes, I’m playing games with that old friend called ‘hindsight’… and I don’t think “friend” was the right word to choose…)
I guess it could be “enemy”, “painful truth”, “reality check”, or “understanding”… What do you think?
What would you name the reflections on your past?
(By the way I love you and I’m scared)
Yes, I am afraid, and I tell you because I know you are too.
What is it about the world these days that its not okay to be afraid anymore?
We are all afraid. We are all scared, but we trade ourselves in for bravery.
Teaching ourselves not to love and that…makes me even more afraid.
Those strangers called my family who never looked at the invisibile scapegoat they named me.
They never opened their hearts to me -if they did I’d never set them free, they are not family, I am not me.
Making my beliefs into a crime masks their mistakes.
I have become their band-aid for their wounds so I carry heavy their crosses on my broken back. I wear the disgraceful badges of their scars (meanwhile they drive like sheep in fancy cars) to social status functions (of discrimination and conceit)I don’t belong in those places.
I don’t wear khakis or drive a minivan I don’t vote to the right or have two-faces.
(I don’t have time for my own skeletons because I’m too busy running from closet to closet hiding theirs) I do not have a placemat for every holiday.
So what if church on Sunday is in my living room?
I hate golf and I wear no veils and there are no screams from the back room in my home… (Well, not anymore)
The truth of my youth -they would rather listen to the hum of a crowd -not their own conscious. Personally I like my own inner thoughts. So much, I write them… alot. Simple times were long forgotten once I finally hit the bottom. So many lessons I have wished I could have taught them. Is it too late now since I don’t know if I can forgive them at all… Yes, your sister fell with the leaves of fall, summer’s end was too late and now I pretend that I never really knew you at all. I may like my thoughts, but I hate the hate I feel. My lifetime of riddles and rhyme are written in time. Signs of my life are at the end of a knife that lives in my back and the blood runs down and out the end of the track. After all, its clear now who is the villian … Some sentences come from much more than just a book or two…I wasn’t right but I’m glad I didn’t listen to you, and maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t wrong but tell me then… what I’m supposed to feel whenever I think of you? My soul cries out to forget what I hate but my children are so loved I cannot be free. Truth be told, i have addictions … but in this game of life… we all got caught… So I think…back…at all the maybes…like… Maybe if I had a mother I would’ve had a chance. Maybe I’d know something more than cheap romance and dumb luck or happenstance. Maybe if I had listened to you, I would’ve known what the hell to do, … Maybe FUCK YOU was the wrong thing to say when I stood there in tears as they took my baby away.. . Maybe if I had stayed awake in school then maybe my husband wouldn’t have been so cruel, or maybe if I had slept more at night or if I had eaten right, taken less pills, drank more water or juice. (Not beer) Maybe then I wouldn’t be here. Maybe if I had not opened the door. Maybe If I had prayed some more. Maybe if I hadn’t done that line then… Maybe if I hadn’t run away… maybe if I hadn’t done that line.. maybe I could’ve stopped time … Maybe then I could have seen the signs… Maybe maybes don’t mean a lot. Maybe or Maybe not.
