They are both gone yet my siblings
go on about how they are missed,
exaggerating their legacy
with each passing year.

I try to search my mind for happy memories
but can only conjure the demons they gave me.
How different might I be had
my parents never been tormented.

But perhaps they had no choice,
maybe the swine did not drown
what Christ intended to drown and
instead emerged from the sea of Galilee
and entered soul after soul down through
the ages, passing from one generation to
the next until they met my grandparents,

and then dished a double dose
for mother and father.

Early on my father tried to drown them out,
his favorite method Black Label,
and that’s when the spirits took him;

spirits fueled by spirits.

And what if for me
those years had been kind?
Raised on warmth and tenderness
instead of fear and loneliness?

I only know that the fear held me
back from total stupidity and
served as a great motivator.
A fearless me would have died
a thousand deaths instead of
the 2 or 3 that I endured.

So now I’m in a place where all is well.
I’m on the other side of the ****.

But without the ****, well,
I just wouldn’t be me.

How true my creator knew me then and
knows me now, weaved all the pieces
of back then into the completion of tomorrow.
He sees my life like a drone sees a vehicle on
a winding road, what’s over the hill and
from where it came all at the same time.

Today I choose to only see what is right before me,
and right now those ancient demons are silent,
softened a bit by mindfulness, therapy, love
and the passing of parents.

In this moment I have no time for
the memory of any of them.