Alternate Ending

.

I wish I had known

of your days

and moonlit evenings.

I wish that I had held

the breath of strange and far off places

in my lungs.

I wish my eyes had seen

the vistas,

the sights,

the unfolding

of a life

that didn’t die one evening.

I have so many apologies,

all for you.

The person that I never was.

The one

that never got to be.

To all whose who I have never met,

and never had a chance to help.

I would have laid down my life for you,

but instead

I took it for myself.

I will never be free of this shame,

but I will bear it.

I will do my best to make

you proud of me.

That you might look at me

across all unlikely space

and time and possibility

and see me and know

that I did my best,

when I had finished

doing my worst.

That I reached the end

and you know that.

I will take solace

in knowing that in some alternate timeline,

I did the right things,

I made the right choices.

You, who dwell within that place,

are my ideal.

The life I never lived.

I am also sad for you.

You didn’t know the terror.

The Hell that bad decisions made,

that drove the hunger in me to be more.

And in that dark and isolated place,

the one that desired to take my life,

I found beauty in the damned

and favour in the redemption,

that only shines a light

upon the weak and the oppressed.

I know that you,

in your time

will face your own Hell,

and I hope

that you are as fortunate as I.

I wish that I

had been stronger,

and more courageous.

I wish that I

had stood by my convictions

and not hid,

and wallowed in delusions,

despairing,

and trying to die.

I know somewhere,

in the infinity of “could-have-beens”,

there you are,

the best of all of me.

I am forever

seeking for signs of you,

reflections

in me

of who I am.

.

.

DJR – 2019