A letter to a real friend

 

 

For Lynn


It is hard to take the truth
delivered at point blank range
like a bullet ripping through
                   the
                  3rd
                    I
even harder to hold back defenses
boiling beneath the surface,
sharp-toothed and hungry.

My disappointment,
                            dipped
in self-pity on the end of her blunt
                              t
                                i
                                 p
                                   p
                                    e
                                      d sword,
lets me know I have spent too long
in the land of the deaf with all that ego
stuffed between my ears, that above all else,
I stopped listening and therefore stopped learning.

Sometimes,
it is hard to take the truth.


Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Published by Counterexample Poetics 12/09