Poem for today:

"Friend?"

We started out as friends, but time revealed true colors. I mistakenly saw you as a comrade, only to learn your dagger was aimed for my back.  I should have known when you told me about your father not allowing blacks in your house.  Yet I try to view you with a different lens – not stained by parent’s ignorance.   But as I said before, true colors eventually show.  In that notebook you shared with the other “friend”, talking about me in cruel ways.  Although I recall you tried to reflect most of the blame on her.

But you were no friend of mine.  Despite your efforts to stay friendly, I never really trusted you and kept you at arm’s length. Then came the time you tried to play matchmaker between me and another friend of yours.  “He’s a mutt like you”.  Wait - did you really say that?  Now, at 37, I would have cursed you out and ask God for forgiveness later.  But I was young and I let it slide – but not without placing that exchange in my mental file cabinet. 

Almost twenty years have passed in a blink of an eye.  There had been a few times I wondered where you were.  Perhaps you’re living the good life in a different city, state or country – or paying for deeds done in the dark.  I probably will never know, but it doesn’t matter. I let the past lay where it is – sleeping in dark shadows, undisturbed.   Perhaps I should thank you for lesson.  I now read between the lines of what people do or say – maybe that’s why I don’t easily fall for politicians or have many close friends.  

true friends are so rare

lost in the mist of fake ones

sun reveals their masks

- A halibun style poem written for dVerse Poetics prompt: Even Monkey Fall from Trees - a poem about mistakes