The One Who Stayed

My mother told me something
That I haven’t been able to shake.
She once told my father
She would never leave the house we grew up in,
Not until they carried her body away.
And when I heard those words,
I wished someone had asked me to stay.
Only to realize
She had.
And I had turned away.
So caught up in my anger,
So consumed by myself,
I never saw her pain,
Or the pain of anybody else.
I didn’t know how to love others
While still loving myself.
I mistook anger for strength,
And distance for safety.
I failed to see the future,
I failed to recognize the truth,
That the man I would become
Would barely know the boy who left.
All those years I thought I was protecting myself,
I was closing another door.
I’m writing this to understand
Why I felt I had to leave,
And what it cost the one who stayed.
And somewhere beneath that anger
Was the man I needed to become,
Waiting to be seen.