Collateral Damage

 

I admit it. 

I spilled all over the place. 

Graced everyone in my life with a mess. It wasn't all mine, but it becomes so, doesn't it? 

Muck everywhere, 

  everyone contorting face to the putrid stink 

Of such foul odor. 

I....

I don't know what to say? 

"Sorry" isn't exactly poetic. 

Like a dreidel always spinning out

  I never new 

Stillness, and I always was, 

 spinning out, mind a divergent whirlwind of systems working against itself. 

It was always as if I was pulled between Heavens. 

This Heaven, and this Earth, and stuck between the two. Never fully emerged into 

One or the other. 

It is all foreign to me. It is STILL foreign. 

Perhaps because there is a home beyond this one?

Perhaps still, because the complexity of human nuance is the barer of all our trouble. 

Still...

It always evaded me. 

I don't like to tell my story too much. 

Too many bad memories- don't like to relive them.

They sit there though, quaking a bit in my gut, as the memories bring back in flashes, 

The forgotten lost boxes of the subconscious mind. 

Doesn't feel good. 

It was all collateral damage, wasn't it? 

Isn't that how it goes, in this 

 "Dog eat Dog", "Survival of the Fittest" 

"This is a man's world" 

"All is fair in Love and War"... kind of world? 

Isn't that just how it goes? 

And well yes, so, I'll admit it. 

I spilled all over everything. 

It was embarrassing, 

and I have regrets, 

and I wish I hadn't been so messy...

Because my mess affected how they 

Would and Could love me, 

Because it affected them. 

I had to heal that. Simply couldn't sit too long there, looking in that mirror, 

Through their eyes. 

Never meant to hurt you. 

  And I wish I hadn't. 

Maybe then, 

  You sis, and you friend, 

Maybe then, you might be here. 

and when I weight it against time...

 and question the things we question 

When we lose someone we love 

  It

is just a shame.  A fathomed and knowable loss. 

And I am sorry. 

   but I am not sure if I should make it up. 

   as it is heavy, 

       The drenched air, 

With the vapor of the putrid past.