Community Confession
I am the sixth leaf falling from the tree.
And I am the grass pushing up each spring.
But the tree contains more than just one leaf,
And the lawn stretches beyond everything.
We contain multitudes: we can be large.
I am large: I fear but I hope each day
That every bud may bloom and not decay,
In the still quiet eternal dawn ray.
I am the green first year far from my home,
Celebrating myself; tears in my heart.
And I am Alphonsus, ‘working’ this door,
Wondering of the culture I im-part.
I am the drunken analyst, breaking
Words into letters and slurring letters
Into stones, and I am Stephen, stoned for
The Truth, refusing these iron fetters.
For I am the broken queer, far from home,
No one should be so broken and alone.
So please, my friends, don’t throw these jagged stones:
Yet the second thrown is somehow my own?
Give me, loved ones, justice for my late crime:
Lash my back and crown me for my success:
I was wholly a fool with no excuse,
But the hole truth is in my hands’ aggress.
Blame not my peers and friends for their silence,
Nor my su-peers for their unleavened bread.
Instead burn out my wretched heart transgress’d:
For after the fire a still small voice said:
Stop giving away my heart, my dear friends.
Please blame me for my evil and my good.
Please know me by my true names when I knock,
For I am large, but this is our neighborhood.
Stephen Ferguson
MGCAS ’17
Featured Image by Zach Halpern / Heights Archives
