Surprisingly Safe

I liked it better
when I pretended,
when I refused to see,
when the lies
I told myself
came easily,
when the harshness
could be described away,
and I could refuse to give the pain
a name, refused
to see the betrayals and abandonment
for what they were,
when it was easier to apologize
for other’s madness,
than to name that madness
and say simply… “it is.”.

Yes, I think I liked it better,
but I was mad then,
because the complication
of pretending goes up exponentially
as we age, as our lives fill and grow
more complicated, and making
the pretend fit together as the volume grew
thicker and thicker with plot and time and characters.
It simply did not work any longer.
and so

i succumbed to the truth,
short,
stark.
real,
painful.
but surprisingly safe,

About this poem

I may, and only MAY, be deep as a person, or so some people say. But as I have aged, and particularly over the last several years, I know this – I have become less complicated. Simpler. I see more clearly. I have lost a lot of innocence. And, as the woman I love has said to me more than once, I can’t go back.

Is life better for seeing more clearly? For having lost my innocence and blindness? Maybe. But whether it’s better or not, it is. And that is enough.

Tom