6/8/12

Doubts
By Juliette Mann


I’m tired.
Tired of guessing and doubting.
Of waiting for an answer to a question I tried not to ask.
Because we don’t ask-
Why we do this to ourselves?
Why it’s our fault?
We point fingers and law searching eyes
On the first things they see.
We plant seeds of doubt.

But doubt will never flower.
Tired eyes and twitching mouths and beat-skipping hearts
Water and sun it.
Until we look inside and that envy has turned opaque,
Only a shield to a flower of guilt.

It starts in the heart and leaks though the veins
Pouring out through the eyes and bursting through the chest.
It takes root in the hands.
They wind around the guessing and the doubting,
And grips them to fuel the guilt.

The guilt that shines with darkness.
That takes your feelings and paints them the dark softness of sadness
That makes you withdraw while still holding on,
Like roots that clamp on but never flower.
It makes you want to throw your feelings in their faces,
Sink your roots into them and make them understand.
To strangle them with truth.
But these feelings only turn around, like a reflection in a mirror
And strangle you, and hang your head down with the weight
Of their truths: Different from your own.

But the guilt lies dormant.
It manifests itself in guessing and doubting
And screams and the fears only project an illusion of it.
It’s when we’re alone.
When the sun can’t burn through the projections and blame.
When the body’s so full of seeds and roots and little leaves
It feels empty
When it finally looks inside and asks
Why?
When, tired of pretensions, we open our eyes
And say yes: I am guilt.
We recognize truth in ourselves
And see the seeds we planted,
That we watered, no one else.
We look and we see
This is me.
And I’m tired.


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