TBD by Lorenzo M. Garcia

I know I should not

Care more what I am to others

Than care what I am to You.

Perhaps, it is the plain

Nature of never truly being aware

What others think

That brings me crawling on splintered glass

Back to an arm

Half outstretched. 

You have never kept

From me Your love—nevertheless,

I find it much simpler to forget,

To push you a thousand miles away,

Into the north sea, where I have 

No time to remember my place in you. 

And now, my own iniquity is mine alone—

There is no one to lift from me

Thoughts of tethering hatred. 

I have, purposefully, jumped 

From a barge bound for land,

Into a small ship—at the whim of every swell.

You’re still near,

Sailing with a heavy plow 

Next to me, who jumps and jostles at

Every bump. 

Yet I try to push You from my head.

I try to feel the cold and the jolts

Of freezing water,

Cold stares, 

But You never exchange

Your tenderness—

It forever bides until I seek myself.

Once I’ve sunk. 

And only

Once I’ve sunk,

Will I be reminded of who I am to You,

And the small ship that 

Threw me from its deck

Will be nothing—a small curse.

My old ship, 

She brought me safety for a time.

She threw me good days, 

And bad, 

Yet just enough of the former

To keep my feet tied to her deck.

And when her hull gave out—

I believed myself to be dead.

In a gleaming black ocean I was

Thrashed in and out of consciousness,

Of contentment. 

I had understood life through her,

And I felt the world through a fickle hull

That embodied nothing immutable. That ship

Saw in me only what I was not—what I did not have.

Do You see me

The same as the day

That I first 

Placed my worth on the ship of another?

Perhaps, does your view of me

Leave nothing but the pureness of 

My soul? In wretchedness

You see nothing but a son.