The Epilogue Entries – No.12

THE LIST

∴

i had a list
of all the wrongs
that had ever been done to me.

i added to it daily.

i wrote on every clean space there was.

it was such a big list
i didn’t even know it was there.

it was the wallpaper
that draped the walls
that made the room
i lived in.

i made matching drapes
so it was homey.

i burned incense therein,
to try and make it holy.

i’m not sure how it started;

whether there was a chipped piece
of that paper
that i picked
and couldn’t stop,

or if perhaps,
when moving some large piece
of mental furniture, –

those fixtures we frequently sit upon
are rarely question their comfort, location, or age –

i banged into the wall
hard enough
to break off a bit
of that plastered seal,

and the lines
of the pages
of the paper
on the wall –

that long, long list –

that wrapper of right worlds –

began to peel.

in thin layers,
crisp as an onion skin,
letters dropped from words
like dead-dried warts
from a softer sole

and i could walk again,
without their customed limp.

i walked to every wall
and peeled,
and stripped,
and washed,
and ripped,

and reassembled the words upon those walls to read:

i forgive.

and then i saw,
no walls at all.

i had papered
the very air about me.

∴

The List