At the Same Time

You cannot feel included

or feel there is a specialness

that you alone bring to this life

or feel needed for who you are, not what you can do,

or feel forgiven

or feel someone’s arms around you in a moment of honesty

and need that are mutual:

you cannot feel

—really feel—

a single one of these

and at the same time hate, abuse, deceive,

fear the truth about yourself,

or wish you were dead or had never been born.

For it is as inevitable as night follows day

that affirmation in any form

destroys every manner of death wish

that ever escaped from the prisons of the human psyche.

February 1988

Photo Credits: Text Talarico / Calligraphy DuBosch / Photography Bachhuber