I Tried Forgiveness

I keep trying to write the poem about forgiveness.
I have the first few lines, know how it’s meant to end

but I can’t make it past the middle, the swirling shame.
I call it my impossible poem. My friend Virginia

texts how’s your impossible poem today?
and I reply oh ya know, still impossible.

I try to eat more fruit, be more angry, lie
flat on my back in the grass. I’m always

driving with the windows down,
letting in the rain. I try to write

more images, be confessional,
tell many versions of the truth—

how I worshipped you & how I wished
you would die. I wished it

on eyelashes and when my friends said 11:11, make a wish!
and when my sister & I tore apart

the wishbone and it splintered in my hand
your face was red as steak across the table & I

wished you would die and later pulled the covers
over my head and wished it again wished die die die die

die die die. The truth
I loved you, even then.

Lying

I was a happy child.
I never wet the bed.
I never crept into my mother’s room at 2AM
and couldn’t wake her.
My mother baked bread in Dutch ovens.
My father never drank. He was kind.
Or he was cruel, but my mother protected us.
I never once blamed myself.
I was a happy child.
On holidays, we threw cocktail parties.
My mother wore a silver dress.
I performed magic tricks for the guests.
My father taught me to drive.
I never made his pain mine.
When I met you, I wasn’t scared.
Nothing stood between me & joy
so I reached out and claimed it.
In my poems, images are metaphor for love.
I see fields and think arms outstretched.
I see the ocean, think bottomless.

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Dylan Harbison is a poet currently obsessed w/ lighthouses. Their work has appeared in Muzzle Magazine, The Offing, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. They live in Asheville, North Carolina, where they run Meter & Melody, a queer poetry night.