-- The Loneliness of Guilt --

By John Herlihy

If true guilt deep within the heart resides

Its indigo ink never washed by the tides

The secret liaison, the betrayed friend,

Always a sense of loneliness in the end.

At the edge of wrong lies guilt’s ugly head,

No sun, moon, or stars, only lingering dread.

Guilt, like a persistent shadow, follows behind;

Wherever you go, guilt is always on your mind.

What you did pretending to be right, but so wrong;

Thru the window of the soul enters a steady gong.

Somber, insistent, always peering over the edge,

Never letting go, like some kind of fervent pledge.

Guilt holds a person as a prisoner, exposed, frail;

All the accusations of a ruined life to assail.

Like a sudden storm, guilt arrives in a rush,

Then the moody despair feels like a hush.

Guilt harbors a secret you can never freely tell;

Guilt harbors a truth that never says farewell.

Will this guilt follow you to the end of your days,

Hand in hand thru life with no parting of the ways?

You wished to place guilt beyond the horizon of lives,

Wrong-doing neatly tucked away, no need to despise.

Just standing there alone with the nakedness of shame,

Just washing over you with no clothes to cover the blame.

Guilt sent you down trails to make your great escape,

Leave your job, move to a new country, a new life make.

At every opportunity, you seek to be free of this ghost,

Haunting the caverns of your mind like an uninvited host.

No options but further concealment to keep guilt at bay,

A heavy stone lodged within that you cannot carry away.

With no ability to speak, guilt says nothing of its doubts;

It just sits there in the mind with its grievance and pouts.

On its own, the loneliness of guilt can no one impersonate;

Its aftershocks along the corridors of the mind resonate.

We end up living with our guilt like a pain we endure,

A purging of our wrong-doing that will make us pure.

Guilt seeks for a key not to remember but to forget,

A way to survive without always suffering from regret.

The weight of one’s guilt a burden on the innocence within;

Perhaps now is time to move on without always feeling grim.

Our feelings of guilt seek forgiveness that contrition brings,

To rediscover that sacred realm where our innocence springs.

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(c) John Herlihy 5 October 2018