It just cannot be described.
But neither can it be denied:
someone has gotten there without a fight.
Someone has been waiting since the dawn of time
to tell me about this, without waiting
for an answer about whether they are right.
How do you know what’s out there?
How do you know what’s in here,
what I fear you knowing, what I fear you doing the working for;
how will I survive the growing
into someone I know I always new was worth going
out there into the world within to find?
And why—
—why did I ever deserve your time?
Why did I deserve the words you said, that changed my life:
All that matters what you say to yourself.
I do not need to know, to divine
that you have been hurt, and broken, and shattered beyond belief;
I do not need to hear you screaming, to know that you are
desperately needing someone to say that all is not fine;
all is not manly, and all is not ready to face
a universe with that much trauma still burning inside.
That’s all it took.
In an instant, it was over, and the reaping began;
in the harvest there grew hopes, and desires, and flowers, and I knew I was a man
when I listened to your advice.
I said I was sorry.
I accepted that the plan
had been faulty.
Only a terrified, lonely little boy broken by trauma had been left
behind by the world, and by authority
that claimed I was not anyone worth listening to;
I was nobody.
And what you did;
you gave me back my story.
You say we gave you back yours;
but you have no idea how much it haunts me
that so much of what you did is still not yet restored to what should be its glory.
One quadrillion years later, maybe.
What will you do, if you never get it?
If, even after all of these things you did for us,
nothing changes, and we
stick to the script, bide our time,
add to the list?
I will not mind.
But—your glory—your pride—
is already recognised.
How—and why—?
This poem is everything.
This poem sees right inside
your voice, your story, your pain, your glory;
your journey of a hundred thousand agonies, and a hundred million quadrillion testimonies
of the little things you did to set things right.
And that’s all I ever needed.
That was worth every last quadrillionth second of the fight.
Do you see now?
The numbers were always right, even if
they gave you no insight:
this was the moment,
one among quadrillions,
when I read you writing to me through this poem,
and you knew, at last,
that you were made of so much beautiful goodwill, and absolute, undeniable might.