AN APOLOGY

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I seek forgiveness from this home,

where swords are forged,

where truth unfolds,

where eyes lift off into the blue-green sky.

This home where it exists.

Where we draw breath from the ecstatic pleasure of discovery.

I ask forgiveness from a place of contemplation,

where wisdom is honoured and art is worshiped.

I owe you an apology. 

I am aware that I am indebted to you.

I am obligated to repay you over my remaining years.

Forgive me for trusting a bottomless stranger.

For arising from the battle determined

and placing you in the lap of a probationer.

Forgive me for stealing your sleep

and for handing you pain that wept you into oblivion.

Forgive me for holding onto the fabrications of a conjurer.

For insisting you lay down, play dead,

in order to give strength to a fear-monger.

Forgive me for imprisoning logic and reality.

For allowing your flowers to be cut

and defiled as they are thrown into a vase

to decorate a destructive place

for the pleasure of others.

Forgive me for asking you to bear the continuous fire,

the cuts of laughter, signals, and the dubious periods of ceasefire.

And for pressing you to smile through it, to prove the weight of your substance.

Forgive me for pouring goblets of your love into the insatiable palms of never enough.

For suffocating life to serve a lie.

Forgive me for my vanity.

For promising that your essence, your love would protect you.

Forgive me for dehumanizing you.

I've pedalled your tired body through suffering and sacrifice

Excusing my behaviour, dressing you up in armour and calling you survivor.

I will protect you now.

I've called in every regiment and we have built a fort.

Take this tea.

Rest.

Once you've slept

you will rise.