Hole

I wrote this poem a long time ago...I wrote it after coming to terms with some things that happened in the past...I'm going to read it on April 3rd at the Barnes and Noble at 66th and Columbus. It's part of a collection of my poems that I'm putting together.

Hole

Up until now, I was stuck in this deep hole.
It wasn’t particularly deep; in fact I could just touch the tips of my fingers to the rim.
But I didn’t have the strength to pull myself out.
The dirty, disgusting, and slimy, and ugly, and oppressive fingers of my prison
had coiled themselves around me and I could no longer break free.

Every day, they crept up a little bit higher up my body,
and by now they were holding my waist in a repulsive fashion, greedily savoring every little drop of hatred for myself that I produced.
The hole followed me everywhere I went, and some days it shrunk itself to a tiny size,
So that no one but I could feel it,
Feel it clutching and sucking on my soul ever faster,
Clinging without any thought to my pain.

And I tried to ignore it,
I did;
But the pain came in little pricks and shocks
Then the stabs and then the gouging and the tears and the blood and the water that
Screamed
From the shower right behind my head
And the sounds of the hundreds of thousands of tiny drops echoing inside my
Prison
Where they pierced my heart and made me remember.

They made me remember why I was in the hole,
And they made me want to break free!
They made me want to break free of the guilt, and the deep dark memories that those
Fingers pulled to the surface and used to make a mockery of me and all that I hold dear,
When all I ever want to do is fix my mistakes.

I am human. I am not flawless.

So I lift myself up, and this time it is I who is pulling at the memories.
I touch every single one,
And I apologize for the burning and the freezing,
For the neglecting and the forgetting,
For anything at all that I had locked up inside, creating that hole that took everything around me and turned it into darkness and made it putrid,
and warped what I had always really been and tried to be.
I take deep breath of the new glistening air,
and I laugh at those wispy, weak, and trivial tendrils of smoke that are desperately trying
to take back their property.

They no longer hold me. They no longer hold me.