The Letter that Forgives Evil and the Psalm that Cries for Vengeance

The Letter

To the little girl with the braids tied in pink ribbons,

I never knew your name. You’re grown up now. Maybe you got kids. Bet you never leave them with someone you don’t know. Then you were seven or eight, the daughter of a friend of the girlfriend I had that week and you came over while she went to court or something. You sat on the couch watching cartoons. You had a scab on your knee and flowered underpants. And your skin was so white and so quiet and I needed quiet.

Now I think I shouldn’t have touched you like that. Then I was stoned and everything makes sense when you’re stoned. There were other girls, but you were the first and the one I saw at night when I pulled the sleeping bag over my head and the traffic on the bridge took over my veins.

I couldn’t get quiet, couldn’t get it right, so I quit living. It’s not hard. And now, I know things. Like I screwed up your life bad. And that bites. You still got time, right? Maybe you’re one of the good ones who can forgive. I don’t deserve it.

I don’t deserve shit. But that’s the weird thing, if you can forgive me, you get better, but it don’t change me a bit. You might even get a life that works okay. That’d be cool. Man, I never wanted no power like I had, messing with your mind, fuckin’ up your life. Maybe you already worked it out. Maybe all I am to you now is a shiver that pulls on your gut.

Death don’t change the past. It just makes you a little smart. Now I get that there were choices. I hope you pick the right thing, the good thing.

From the man you always hoped was dead and finally is



The Ranting Psalm

O God they say we are all your children
They say we are all created in your image
They say we are born again into your eternal love

And I say to you what about those who abuse your children
What about those fathers who come into their daughters’
Bedrooms at night, who pull back their covers
And force their sour breath upon their innocent skin
Would it not be better if you smote them
Destroyed with your own hand those who would destroy a childhood

Why are you silent why do you allow the shattered
To suffer in silence and shame
Surely God you should exercise justice they say vengeance is yours

And I want to know if you’re ever going to use it
Reach down your hand and press it against the throats of the transgressors
Until they can whisper no more until the sounds of don’t tell anyone
Are drowned in the gurgle of their spit
Silenced in their dying breaths

Stop granting second chances stop looking the other way
Stop pretending time heals all wounds
Stop killing hope and innocence and childhood
Too many of your children have suffered
At the hands of those who say they love them

I want what is right God I want what is just
I want you to restore what has been stolen
From your daughters and from your sons

Like King David I plead with you
Get off your throne get your head out of the clouds
You’ve done it before you can do it again

They say that you are love they say that you love us
So what about bringing wholeness what about saving souls

You will of course in time eventually
But why must the suffering last so long

Writing Prompt 47

What's your cancer story? How has your life been impacted by your experience?
Write a letter to someone who needs to know--spouse, children, God...

The Cancer Letter

Is there anyone who doesn't have cancer? Right now, a husband and wife in my church both diagnosed (early thankfully) at the same time. A choir member whose husband died a few weeks ago of renal cell cancer. My brother-in-law fighting multiple myeloma. An older man at church getting skin cancer removed, all sorts of relatives of church members undergoing treatment for one variety or another. How do we survive it--those who recover, and those who mourn those who succumbed? Without God, where do we find hope?

Another Letter from the Dead


Darling Kathleen,

You amaze me, the way you held up through it all. Still are. Driving the children to school, making beds and lunches, folding laundry. Where do you find it, that inner strength? Or is it simply numbness. Changing the phone number was a bit much, but if that’s what it took to stop your mother from calling every day, why not?

I heard her, the old biddy, and your aunts, reciting their platitudes. “He’s out of his misery.” “He’s gone to a better place.” “He’s with the Lord, now.” Fuck you. That’s what I’d want to say, if I were alive. Sometimes I forget it’s not about me any more. It’s about you. It’s about you because you sat by my bed for months and washed my scalp with a washcloth and clipped my goddamn toenails. You saw the worst happen and now you have to pick up the pieces and reassemble the mess I made of our lives.

Burning the sympathy cards, I liked that. Enough with the Hallmark crap.

There are so many things I am sorry for. I am sorry that the cancer ate away not only at my body, but at your hope, at our dignity, at the security of our children. I wish now that I had been brave enough to leave before everything was depleted. Somewhere, beneath the morphine and oxygen and the fading in and out of consciousness, I couldn’t bear to leave you alone with the children and no job and no money. I was afraid; afraid you’d fall apart after I was gone. I thought the lingering would make it easier.

You must feel so cheated. It was all for worse, with no better. It was all in sickness, with no health. And now all you have is death do us part. I’m sorry for the fear, how it held me back. I wish I could appear like a fairy godmother with a magic wand and wave it over you and Brittany and Josh. Cast a magic spell and you’ll live happily ever after. But there’s nothing I can do.

What can I say? Let it out. Scream and yell; cry all you want. Cry until your pillowcase is soaked. Swear at me; I won’t be offended. Swear at God; God can take it.

When people ask, tell them I was a selfish bastard and you’re glad I’m gone, wish I’d died ten years sooner. Or tell them I left a pit in the center of your life and the only thing that keeps you from jumping in after me, is the rope the kids have tied to your waist. Remember that oncologist at Stanford, the one who went to med school after her baby died of leukemia? We raised our eyebrows when she told us. And when she left the room you said, “If it were me, I’d get as far away from cancer as possible.”

Now it is you. I won’t tell you everything is going to be okay, because I don’t know. Maybe life is terrible. The only thing I can tell you, the only thing I know to be true is this: You are not alone. Even when you wake up terrified in the middle of the night, aching for me, aching for someone to hold you and smooth your hair and kiss your forehead, and find no one there, no one at all. Even then, you are not alone. Maybe that’s eternity. We are threads in a web, invisible, but real nonetheless.

I remain yours,

Darryl

Writing Prompt 46

Think of an ex--yours, your parent's, your child's. What needs to be said from this side of the grave, or the other. Write the letter. Then what? Rip it up? Burn it? Post it to your blog?