The Rejection and the Redirection

Don’t look back….

~

He lies

just out of reach.

~

We pause to avoid collision;

other dancers on a tangent.

We stand,

my hand on his shoulder,

and it’s easy.

I could stay here—

still in the churning world—

for the rest of my life,

never feeling out of place

simply at his side….

~

Don’t look back.

~

A moment of poor judgement.

A lie.

A stupid, pointless lie.

These things I never do,

these falsehoods I never tell.

The sample becomes

tainted,

and the blade of the guillotine

falls….

~

Don’t look back.

~

What if I said something?

What if I apologized?

Explained away

my foolishness?

Would it make a difference?

Or would I just be a bother?

I think

I know

the answer.

~

Don’t look back.

~

It looms,

lingering,

haunting the shadows.

It thrives

in my periphery.

The stars spark brightest

when you don't look at them.

Ever there;

never there.

What could have been

exists only in the absence of perception.

It is a fantasy,

a fable,

based on a naïve truth.

I could reach my hand behind me

and touch him—

the hairs like hackles raised on the back of my neck—

but my fingers pass through

cold,

empty air.

He feels the most real

when what was,

what never shall be,

is standing

directly

behind me.

~

For never again will he be

in front of me.

~

Don’t look back—

~

The judgement card—

Libra’s card—

is not negativity;

it’s Newton’s third law.

You get

what you deserve.

~

The sensation

is not physical.

The tip of the knife

hovers

millimeters away

from the weave of my shirt.

Ever there;

never there,

it won’t touch my back,

but I can feel

the air

around it.

Because I spoke a lie,

and received rejection.

But I also spoke

a vulnerable truth,

and was gifted praise.

The door was opened,

but I wouldn’t step through

without the knife

at my back.

~

The fans know

that “What Is

And What Should Never Be”

is a beautiful wish

that seems like

salvation.

But it is a fantasy,

a fable,

with no real payout.

The greatest adventures

are “never fun

while you’re having them.”

They come with pain.

Because,

as a writer once told me,

a story starts

when a problem starts.

The reward

must be earned.

~

So don’t look back.

I don’t need to.

I can feel it,

pressing,

tingling;

the tangible void

scented with rosemary for remembrance.

Ever there;

never there.

The ghost of my past—

his breath on the nape of my neck,

his knife at my back,

my hand on his shoulder—

urging me forward

so I can write

all of my stories.