The Grudge I Can’t Put Down
I’ve tried to put the grudge down on the table,
I’ve tried to walk away from it when I was able.
I’ve tried the conversations about letting go,
I’ve tried the frameworks and the vertigo
of the therapy that said the anger costs you,
the therapy that said the grudge exhausts you
more than it exhausts the man who earned it,
more than it costs the one who made me burn it.
I know the math on grudges and the holding,
I know the math on grudges and the molding
they do to the man who carries them beyond
the point of useful, the man who’s been conned
into thinking the grudge protects him from repeating,
into thinking the grudge is better than completing
the accounting and walking out the door,
into the part of his life that lives before.
The grudge I can’t put down, I’ve tried to put it down,
the grudge I can’t put down, I’ve put it on the ground
and picked it right back up before I’d walked ten feet.
The grudge I can’t put down, it won’t accept defeat.
It won’t accept the setting of it to the side,
the grudge I can’t put down has been along for the ride
since before I understood the cost of carrying.
The grudge I can’t put down is still here harrowing
the field of what could grow if I would let it sit.
The grudge I can’t put down, I’m not ready yet to quit
carrying it, and that’s the honest thing to say.
The grudge I can’t put down is mine and it will stay
until the minute that it finally weighs
more than the thing I’m holding it against. The days
accumulate and the grudge accumulates.
The grudge I can’t put down, it just propagates.
The grudge is not the anger at the event,
the grudge is not the anger that was sent
to me by what happened on the original day.
The grudge is the maintenance of what I’d say
to the man if I could say it and it land.
The grudge is the keeping of my hand
on the record of the thing that was done wrong.
The grudge is the memorial in the song
that plays whenever I encounter the reminder.
The grudge is the thing that’s behind the finder
of the pattern that connects the present trigger
to the original event. The grudge is the river
that runs between the past and the present tense.
The grudge is what keeps the accounting dense.
But the grudge outlives the usefulness of that,
the grudge runs past the point where it falls flat
against the original event like it still fits.
The grudge runs long past where it sits
proportionally in the life I’m actually living.
The grudge runs past what anyone’s forgiving,
including me. And I am not forgiving,
I am just tired of the half-life giving
all its radiation to a past event.
I am not forgiving, I am just spent.
And so the grudge goes with me into the day,
and so the grudge sits quiet on the shelf
most of the time and then the trigger hits,
and so the grudge emerges from the bits
of the ordinary life and fills the room,
just at different volume, always there.
I’m still holding something in the air
that would be better on the ground but I can’t let it,
and the grudge won’t let me forget it.
The grudge I can’t put down is part of who I am
at this point, which is either the exam
question of my life or just the fact
of the anger and the years that made a pact
to build a structure in the house of me.
The grudge I can’t put down, and it won’t be
set down today, that’s the honest word.