Untied Shoestrings

Untied Shoestrings

(“Watch out, worthless shepherd who abandons the flock!” Zechariah 11:17a)

Faintly I put myself in your hands,
silently I waited for another sideward glance saying
I’m not easy to hold.
I could have been bolder,
said my piece,
made you feel the way you did to me.
Your religion inflicted more pain than
my missteps deserved. You could explain
everything that your devilish assumptions ordained.

I never wanted to be exonerated, never wanted to
skate away free.
I just wanted to be another human
who tripped over his own untied shoestrings,
taking all the blame.

But you whispered to others and
raised your eyebrows at me. You listened
to the scowls around me that sculpted my cheating
like a statue at the end of the game. I was left on an island
guarded by gunboats blasting the reefs around my knees.

I shared my shadows and should have lied.
I confessed my persistent cough that plagued me
while you blew your nose behind my back. I just
wanted someone to see
me in the dark like the moon after your eyes get used
to midnight mass. I wanted to sit in the balcony again
while a best friend sang
O Holy Night.

Now the knots have been tied for so long
I cannot loosen them. I hope, after enough time,
after I’ve forgotten every trap set for me,
that the rhymes will come easier,
the light will shine like a meteor before the
northern lights shower the deepening night.
The sun fell into the horizon too fast for me to follow.

Faintly I offered my pain,
silently I sat like a broken vase,
sadly I thought I deserved so much worse,
finally I know better, but my emotions are tied fast
to the shepherd’s rod that bruised my back.

I’ll be who I am since the pain will be the
same
no matter how close I am to the end of the trail.
Faintly I hope my words will vent, my syllables
the agents of my partial health as stars shine the
same for me as the chains are chiseled off of me.
If I could forget

I’d gladly cast off their restraints.