it is not what they say, but what they
don’t say that haunts you for years to
come; how you are afraid you will grow up
to talk too much or too little; how you are
afraid your child will cry one day and you
will say, “it’s really not that bad.”
it is not what you feel, but what you don’t
feel, like a wound covered so thick with cotton
you forget it’s there; how you desperately pray
to wince at the penicillin shot or the bee sting
or the arrow to the heart so you, too, can feel
alive. sometimes in your dreams you’ll look a man
in the clean whites of his eyes, tell him exactly
what you think, watch his mouth drip disbelief–
but somehow, even before you wake,
you always end up saying i’m sorry.
–Joy Sawyer
Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./BOOKS & CULTURE
July/August 1996, Vol. 2, No. 4, Page 5
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