Stories Seldom Told

Stories Seldom Told
by Bud Hensgen

I participated in SPARK recently--an artistic project where writers and visual artists pair up and create work inspired by one another.

My friend Bud and I worked together. Above is his original piece, Stories Seldom Told. Below is the poem I wrote in response.

I.
My life is messy.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve accumulated
a century’s worth of memories in half that time.

Those memories are contained, ordered,
like stories on a page.
Sometimes I read them, and let my imagination take me back,
carefully.

But on occasion they jump off the page, and come alive,
and suddenly they’re reading me.
It’s frightening, and a little fun
as they surround me and fill me.

I relive the embarrassing moments;
the times I felt famous
or ashamed
or loved.

The truth swirls and flows and is hard to get hold of.
What happened blends with what I wish happened,
or what I fear happened.

I remember the feelings more than the events.
I see the faces of the characters
but often can’t remember their names.

Imagination picks up where memory leaves off,
And the stories grow over the years.

I want to keep my life, my past, my story
neat and linear:
”Look how I’ve grown through the experiences!”
All of it working step by step to create the man I am today.

As if my commendable resume reflected my actual life.
As if I were the man others see.

But who I am today has little to do with orderly growth.
It’s from a lifetime of mistakes, failures, blunders;
with occasional victories that I fell into more than I orchestrated.
Blessings that I don’t deserve.

My good choices have multiplied.
My poor ones minimized.
I’ve been damn lucky.

II.
In all of this mess and marvel of my life,
there is one memory, one story
that I keep fighting off.

I try to beat it away.
I run and hide.
I beg and plead.
I fill my mind with anything else I can think of,
But sooner or later, it always comes back,
big and cold and blood red.

So I remember.
I cry and confess and pray to forgive myself.
I lie there, empty and weak
as my tears carry the weight away.

The story is still there, but it’s a little lighter.
It lets me breathe.
I look through it and around it at the rest of my life,
and see the beauty and joy that have come since.

The pain I feel is more like a punch in the gut
than the complete beating it used to be.
And I can live with that.

I don’t want it to go away completely,
for as much as I hate that story,
it is mine.

I can’t wish it didn’t happen,
because without it, I would not be.

So I keep my story, deep down, seldom told, but always there.