On the one side there is this:

Of the top 10 moments of my life,
6 of them circle back to you,

Counting backwards in time
they are these:

The moment the angels descended as we sang.
There are no words needed to describe the ascent
that would be born of that, notwithstanding the prison days
and all the haze that tries still to thwart true clarity.

The raindrops splattering and all the flashes of
ten thousand moments of holy significance through time,
even as you droned on about something wholly insignificant
and failed to see me there or care
how it broke my heart.

The promise of 10 years of grace.
I know you didn't keep it but I count it
nevertheless for to not do so would unravel everything
the 10 years before and these 20 since.
Hence, it stays on the list.

The blessing of the child.

The World's Fair. Though I have yet to receive
confirmation that was truly you, and the song
should have been a clue. And you went to China
with somebody else, not me. And I went back
to being the fifth wheel or forgotten one,
my seeming destiny in time, while you 
sat in the stands and went on with your life
as if the two minutes spent
meant little if anything.

The time you said I mattered,
which of course I see now was some afterthought
but for me was the hinge of everything 2000 years hence
and was enough to have me, then at least, rise and fight
for my right to breathe, to bless, to be.

On the other side there is that:

I won't bother with the puncture wounds
and punctuations of pain or rhythmic repetitions
of insult or injury. But there are all the gifts
they laid out on a blanket before me 
when I was 12 and watching them
one by one seized from me,
albeit unconsciously, by you.

But those moments lost
to you and me of such import.

From the first to the last,
they are these:

How you said I had to go because
of some rule you then proceeded to break
by hiring someone else to take my place,
throwing in some extra perks and disregarding
altogether the changing weather of our world.
Not to mention my perpetual suspension,
dangling from a thread and barely 
managing to maintain a state 
something less than dead.

The moment you put your records on
and droned on and on about love lost
and all the cost to you, not seeming to realize
who it was you were talking to. How it shot
10 arrows through my heart that I knew were
a portent of things to come and in my defiance
said I did not care and stood there
seeking to soothe and pretending
there was nothing left to lose.

The 20-minute ride with the president and his wife
when I might have found the courage to say
what could have—what might have, with
a million other pieces falling into place and
the wind of Spirit moving through time and space
and a little luck and love reaching back from the future
to him, to prevention of the compromise that led
to the gash in the human psyche which I failed
with Plan B to complete satisfactorily.

The moment you whispered something in my ear
about me doing what was best as I was doing 
something I didn't want to do at all. But having
on that day decided you did know best and want
my best, I did my best to grant you what you wished
and said nothing of the disregard they all dished out.
And after the whisper: long silence, locked in the room,
blue liquid forced upon me, the doctor acknowledging
the error, the treachery and terror. And after the silence
(wearing the same clothes for 4 days because
when they asked what I needed and I told them, 
this seemed some bridge too far), some strange
scenario where you spoke words that broke me
and break me still every single day of my life.
How you flung some dagger of an accusation
that was so far from truth I still die every day
to think that you might have believed it.
And though I have not failed to practice love
every morning and every night, still
there has never been any reprieve
as you so quickly took your leave
and denied me closure or kindness
and composed some story 
that was a falsity
but framed me
again in time
alone.

[And the silence that went on and on and on.]
[And the sound and the fury born of it.]

The night of the letter's delivery
and the inexplicable and perplexing threat
that to this day I do not undersand any part of...
How it came as I sat doing my very best to protect
the treasure in his heart, to hold fast to love
and freedom and the living legacy. It unraveled
so quickly with that second blow that, though I
did not know it then, was merely some warm up
for sinister seizure of my sanity through a denial
of community and the taking of all that was left
which had sustained me and my tenuous ability 
to remain tethered here and present to my child
and all things innocent—to remain,
however bent, not broken and
soft-spoken and true to who
I came to be
and free.

The montage of moments
of invisibility and utter instability,
when you have seemed to relish
in my reeling, stealing all the good work
we were meant to do together. But more than that:
pantomime of pretend that painted the world in such a way
that I was not even granted by you a belonging to it.
For, while your paint by numbers could not undo it—
the truth, the treasure, the turn and the return,
still, the palpable passing of every moment here,
having to carry it all with not one true or faithful friend
while assaulted relentlessly with the beauty of what 
could have been if only.... If only love had been
received by your beautiful family, by she who once
upon a time stepped with me upon that shore. If only
you could have acknowledged, if only in your heart,
or done your part even from afar. Or put up one picture
remotely resembling true reflection of who I am. It is this
motley montage of moments real and remembered
that undoes everything. Yet, ultimately...

It is this same montage
that reminds me of this:

On the one side
On the other side
Truth is, there is no side.
It is one thing:

An unbreakable ring
where all of this falls away
and matters not and I live
to see another day
and all things lifted up,

Restored
to innocence,
to beauty,
to love.

If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
But I shall leave my heart with you.
Do with it what you will.