All These Little Things

© Anne Sumner 2017

Things I never meant to say
Like ancient history
Scenes my memory can't erase
They're always with me
And I've been entirely unforgiven
And hopelessly ashamed

Not like others in their art
To walk so surely
Guess I never saw the path
That lay before me
And I've been spectacularly broken
And lived to tell the tale

And I can't un-say what's been said
And I can't un-hear what plays in my head
And I can't un-see the things that I have seen
When all these little things have brought me here

Born in 1981
We came out screaming
They say that life here has begun
Before we're breathing
And I've found it hard to shake the child-like nature
Written in my skin

See this life it needs some skill
I've yet to master
People take me as I will
And sometimes not at all
And I've found it hard to tell the stories
That account for what they saw

And I can't un-say what's been said
And I can't un-hear what plays in my head
And I can't un-see the things that I have seen
When all these little things have brought me here

Take down your precious walls of mystery
I know there's no-one coming after me
And in time, the things that you would try to forget
May be the only things you know are real
These little pieces of the lives we lead

And this was twenty years before
The great unfriending
Many times I've had the thought
That it's all ending
And I've been unsettled by the notion
That there is no kind of plan

And I can't un-say what's been said
And I can't un-hear what plays in my head
And I can't un-see the things that I have seen
When all these little things have brought me here