July 27, 2001

If there's no title for the poems I find in these journals (and many of them are without title), their dates suffice. This poem is particularly rough in its style, but describes very real circumstances, for which reason names are blocked out. If you have any familiarity with me from that time, though, you probably know exactly who they describe:

Many moths ago,
Before we were friends
I thought of you in horror
As a monster to no ends.

So I mocked and gossiped
Behind your back
The horrible things I said!
For which I should be whipped.

At Camporee I then found out
The struggles and the pain
The pain you faced every day,
The pain that made us friends.

When I became ambassador
Between the last two tables,
I tired of the Boy Band talk,
The endless talk of media.

When you told me of
Your love for B________.
I already knew, you see.
J_____ had already told me.

In procession are the events
In which I led you
Down the trail of mockery;
The picture, play, and story.

The picture, as you might have imagined
Was not requested of me
I offered and drew it myself
And then J_____ was pleased with me.

Later I sought to draw more
More pictures of your romance
But then I felt the spirit of guilt
And threw them in the trash.

Later, even than that
I wanted to communicate the story,
So I picked up pen and paper and the words began to flow
Putting down what I perceived for you alone to know.

But yet again I got caught up
In fictitious acts of heroism
Then the play I began to write
Just made it worse for you.

After all the written pranks
I turned to my computer;
It supplied greeting cards
And sonnets of amour.

So you see that I am not, indeed,
One worthy to be your friend.
Instead I should be punished,
Tortured to no end.

Yet still you show your mercy
And remain as my companion.
Which leaves me one question:
Why? Why? Why?

Incidentally, that "Why?" eventually became my redemption. The struggle with guilt described in this poem, and the friend to whom it was addressed, taught me the true love of Christ in a way that was more than a word to me, and it changed my life forever.