With all due honor for the truth of who you are
and all the ways our storied hearts are woven as one,
I will suffer no more of your falsity. Nor will I continue
to intervene on your behalf with a higher authority
when you chirp on about integrity even as you
go on and on running in circles seeking to convince
yourself you were right or you did not know
or you could not see or you are not free
or this just can't be. Enough of such
disreputable dishonor in the name
of diligence.

Funny, not funny, how I who only had love
was the target of such vile and vitriol and all
the silencing while you bustle about or twist and shout 
to all the oohs and ahs. They join your game
and ooze their shame and project it all
on me. You may be shipwrecked but
what do they care, for somewhere—"Look!
She's over there!! Speaking up when she should 
be silent."—there is the one who could kill our story
with her penchant for the truth. Truth be told,
I never did then or now. I followed the river's flow.
Even here when I see and know the cost and nearly
lost my life and lost so many things.

But from a distance rings in my ear
shallow, empty words mixed with his name,
he who walks with me and talks with me,
and it strikes me in the heart this time
and not my head. I am far from dead.
If you should speak another word
about me as if I were an object or a thing
or enter into another deliberation
steering said concerned conversation 
in any manner that you choose,
whomever's family you may dare 
to engage, whatever so-called community
which long ago excluded me you gather,
they still so adored with all the reasons why
I am to be ignored—if, then from this day forth
the reversal of fortune in truth 
shall commence.

Do mark the date this February
on the 5th for it has significance.
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
Listen, listen to the little bird—for the one
who tells me everything shall now fly to you
as the hawk shall sound his cry to you
and descend one way or the other.
Their two-sentence letter made them feel better
and was delivered with a stamp, unlike the first
stuffed into the box by deacon deliverer
straight from the gates of hell,
a toll of the bell 23 years ago.
Where did the time go?

Two years now since the line of demarcation
and decision returned and my heart decimated
placed back in my hands. Life has its demands;
still I would bear all things, believe all things, hope
all things, endure all things. I am granted this:
a wish, and I have made mine. It is that neither you
nor any soul who tears at the whole shall be
permitted to speak that name of One who touched
my eyes so I could see and go forth into all
to remember again who I am, the One who
lived in you as life itself, somewhere still does.

In case you have not noticed, all
premeditated harm has been returned
unopened but with the bill for damage done
plus interest due from all who hide in deciding
from a distance the direction one should take.
Shake, shake, shake. All shall be shaken
and seen for what it is. Whether they share
my blood or wish to see it spill, whether
in their shame-soaked stupor they fling fire,
spurred on by devils flying in the sanctuary
or sit like ducks,12 men lined up, dumbstruck
by your powers of persuasion in a room where
you sit satisfied and speak with silver tongue
as if I were no one and not present.

No weapon forged against me will prevail,
but only time will tell true colors and false flags
and all the pomp and circumstance around
the pied piper's hollow tune and all those
who followed suit. The emperor indeed
has no clothes and I suppose if this is the way
you want the story to go then this is how it will go.
As for me, your letter is written on my heart
and nothing will part me from it or erase it
from the record, whatever you may do and
wherever it is done, from three feet behind
or from a distance, this gap, this gulf created
by the chasm and vaccuous void in which
you place yourself again and again.

The old world passes now.
A new life begins.