The Stranger
You are the tears in the eyes of the child who scrapes her knee; you are the smells in the tattered clothes of the broken man who sips his wine; you are the curses in the mouths of the teens who hang out on the corner; you are the breath in the life of the old woman who dies.
Go away from me.
No. I will go away from you.
I will go to a place with no scraped knees, smelly drunks, arrogant kids, dying women.
I will make a woundless, pleasant, respectable, happy place for me.
A wound that cannot be seen; a stench that cannot be smelled; an arrogance clothed in niceties; a life that is death or a death that is life dying slowly - self-created, self-preserved, selfish.
May your tears wash me; gently lay your dirty coat over me for I am cold; curse away my own arrogance until my heart can hear your blessing.
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
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