The Brink of Never

If I speak in riddles it is only because
It hurts too much to tell you how it really was
And even though I was there I never quite knew
What to think of what my young self was going through

Such thoughts as I have are visual memories
Which resist translation into words such as these
By my old self today looking back on it all
Some parts of which appeal while most others appall
An unfinished memoir better left unbegun

A long and hard and painfully protracted fall
In suicidal spiral through the bright spring sun
But I fall free as you will see when I have done
What I came here to do and that it was better
Spoken in riddles than written in a letter

Neither sage nor salesman I am not so clever
As to think I could describe the brink of never

+Steven Curtis Lance


Copyright MMVIII