So drunk I couldn’t stand
“How You Found Me”
to eat a meal or keep
my secrets from burning
me to ash
Out back lighting cigarettes to still
my hands from doing harm
If every offer of forgiveness were an Emily Dickinson poem, we’d be searching for the 4th and 5th meaning of each word. Chelsea Bunn’s Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press) is a dive into the language of forgiveness. Because too many accept language at its most base level, it is easy to simply accept I’m-sorry-please-forgive-me each time it slips from the mouths of those who seek comfort – including our own
From those we love, to those we’ve loved in mirrors, we are left to sift through and decide between thoughts, facades, and realities. This is our path to survival, to strength, to moving on regardless of those who’ve hurt us. Because while we can move step-by-step through the process there will always be “the woman at the meeting [who tells you] / your disease will always be there / in your right ear telling you / to fuck it all up but in your left ear / is god telling you not to” and to whom do you listen? Or believe?
Our lives move on whether or not we are able to forgive or not. Either way we have to know that:
What I’d hoped
may not be true:
that here, all grief
collapses like a star,
its matter ejected into space.
That here, all sins
are turned to dust.
Purchase your copy of Forgiveness from Finishing Line Press.