What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
Hurt – Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)/Johnny Cash

I was darkness and fury
To your light and sun
On a whim I simply snuffed it
It’s a hurt that can’t be undone
I thought I knew what I was doing
To take you for granted and then some
Only to simply walk away
Leaving you as chaff in the wind’s sway
And how the shame of it numbs
What have I become?

With me as predator and you as prey
I shot an arrow through your soul
You had no chance in this farce
There was no means to console
I thought I knew what I was doing
Going for the break, not just the bend
Damn how your body trembled
As your soul disassembled
And how the shame of it wends
My sweetest friend

You were my own soul’s mirror
Shattered in a thousand places
And I felt the pain as my own
In a thousand fractured faces
I thought I knew what I was doing
How I’ve come to rue that day
Seeing the evidence of what I did
I was loath to leave it hid
And how the shame of it stays
Everyone I know goes away

You never said a word, I know this
But somehow your break struck me to the core
Never one to rage, yet it changed you
And everyone wanted to know the score
I thought I knew what I was doing
Now I am the chaff in the wind
The wounds of my hateful inflections
Forever bared in my reflections
And now the shame of it does rend
In the end

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At dVerse Poets Meeting The Bar, Björn challenges us to write a glosa. I have not written one in what feels like ages. The image “Shame” by Ally Saunders already had Muses’ attention, but I did not know what direction to go with it until Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails played on my iTunes, and everything fell into place. I always felt Trent Reznor’s NIN original was suppressed rage in the aftermath of a wrong done, and Cash’s cover was resignation of those wrongs in the sunset of the life lived. Here, I aim for the liminal space between rage and resignation – acknowledgment of the unforgivable.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar at the Spanish Court