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Inside Out

Can there be any greater pain
Than the rejection of your mother, your sister, your kin?
Death itself is less heart stabbing.
It is impersonal.
It does not seek to inflict pain.
It is indifferent and in this,
Death is kind.

I am certain there is no substitute for a mother’s love,
Nor a cure for this stinging 8-ball in my throat.
I don’t think I’ll ever walk this earth with a lightness of being.
Sadness is with me always to varying depths beneath the surface.
With time it ages like weathered skin.
Like a photograph of an old indigenous person weathered by life,
It takes on a beauty of its own.
I am weathered.

As I sit here in Starbucks with snot dripping from my nose
I am perfectly accepting of my indecency.
All the things which have been kept secret and out of sight
Flow from me now,
Visible for all to see.  In this,
I've never felt more okay.

Longing has become my friend.
I no longer have the energy nor the inclination to fill it
And it has not the energy nor inclination to ask me to try.
We are like two old men sitting contentedly on porch steps
Watching the people hurry by.

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