Forgiveness

 

I was 18,

had only started driving

and didn’t realise a main road

was ahead.

I just snoozed my way across

—thought I had the right of way,

no less.

I grasped the madness of my fault

as I sailed across the bitumen.

—A streaker across a warzone;

some bird through the blades of a turbine.

I could have been crushed.

I was never in control.

I was nothing. I could have been killed.

Are we ever in control?

Our passions—anger, sadness—come and go.

They’re not in our control.

We’re told, of course, they are,

but trimming hedges back will never kill a root.

Falling in love and breaking up:

they, too, are not in our control.

Even times I’ve done the breaking up:

I wasn’t really in control

of anything

at all.

The moves I make to cook my food:

I do them out of hunger

or habit: both out of my control.

Being born, my earliest tears,

or all the tears I’ve ever cried:

no control.

Then the time

I almost died

on some main road.

We’re not in control.

It calls for forgiveness, really,

of everyone.

Even yourself.

I think we learn to forgive

when we see

we’re none of us

in control of our lives;

or, we learn how to love

when we see

we’re not

even truly

alive.