Whose gift this is you cannot know.
My heart is in your keeping though.
You will not mind my writing here
To tell you that I love you so.
I know that you must think it queer
For me to love and not come near
But linger by some frozen lake
This most romantic time of year.
I sometimes give my head a shake
And ask if there is some mistake.
It's lonely out here 'mid the sweep
Of bitter wind and icy flake.
My love for you is dark and deep,
But it's a promise I will keep
As from afar I watch and weep,
As from afar I watch and weep
Evil has no easy explanation.
Everyone is evil and is good.
Sometimes we watch ourselves do something evil
Frozen in a scream that's never heard.
We cannot stop ourselves, so we go on,
Knowing somewhere else the horror plays
And plays and plays until we are forgiven,
Healed by someone's gift of unearned love.
When someone has been tortured as a child,
Evil, like a mad dog, crouches near.
One buries it deep in a vaulted, lead-lined chamber,
But zombie-like it stalks the world within.
It's strange that darkened children need forgiveness
For evil that they suffer, innocent.
But guilt's the trademark of humiliation,
Burned into the flesh of memory.
Love washes over evil like an ocean,
Sweeping over seething, fisted anger,
Drowning it in cold, unquiet depths,
Leaving you weak and weeping on the strand.
You wouldn't be yourself without the pain
That twists inside like penitential dancers,
Making you the stage of some strange beauty,
Like no one else, the host of our redemption.
Although consumed by fury, you still loved us.
At least that is the knowledge of my heart.
Screaming like a child, you would beat us
Until you snapped, and then the tears would start.
"You know I love you," you would cry, demanding
More of us through tears than with your fist.
And we, through tears, would nod our understanding,
Too bullied in our pain to dare resist.
Yet now that you've been dead for many years,
And I have wandered through my own vast hell,
I see the desperate anguish in your tears
And hope at last that I can love you well.
For only in my love can your love be
The love that once, I think, you had for me.
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