Revisionist History

I’ve turned the lights off
to sit in the dark while everyone celebrates.
I’m so afraid of revisionist history.
I try to remind myself
that Native Americans and Slavery and even the Holocaust
are now studied in school.
But the proof that my story ever happened
has so often been denied,
even when it was current.

I sometimes think
that if the stories would just conveniently disappear,
it could so much more comfortably be
as if they (I) had not ever happened at all.

As it is though,
I am a receptacle for traumas
that have already happened.
While some will forge ahead
into hope and change,
some of us will bring up the rear,
composting the landscape
with the stories required
for an honest growth.

When 9/11 blasted through our denial
and the glass and bodies fell down,
I thought our world would finally know
that individual terror
really counts.

I want to party with the patriotic,
worship with the religious,
grade test scores with the educators,
read x-rays with the doctors,
design energy efficient units with the architects,
and be able to afford the new car smell of a hybrid.

I wish I didn’t know
that arbitrary divisions of land masses means
fighting over resources,
that organized religions
promote ‘us’ and ‘them’,
that test scores
indicate nothing useful when it comes to compassionate living,
that medical symptoms generally aren’t the issue,
that form needs to follow function,
and that affluence begets access to energy efficient products.

Because then
I could turn my lights on
and dance the ‘HBO, free for all tonight’, television mambo.

The problem is
history happened.
Things don’t disappear
when they already are.
And we can’t let go
of truths we’ve never let ourselves have.