Knox My Biggest Mess-Up
We were taught not to flagellate ourselves
with the lash of guilt, the way religions made you
do; we were inculcated with this
until you felt guilty
about ever feeling guilty.
We learned the Gospel of No Regrets;
the Holy Sacrament of It’s Cool;
the Sacred Litany of No Worries.
But sometimes you deserve remorse,
like when you started to get
a bad vibe about Pan, the de facto leader
of your group (which called itself
leaderless). And so one night
you furtively rummaged through his things
while he entertained a very young (she claimed
to be eighteen, but you wonder) and pretty
(and intoxicated) new addition to your group
and you found his driver’s license.
And you wrote down
his true name. And the next time
you were in a library, you looked
it up and lo and behold found
that he was registered as a sex offender in Oklahoma
for some pretty bad-sounding stuff,
which might explain why your group had never
been to Oklahoma (but everywhere else)
and that was the final straw; the thing
that made you decide
enough was enough. But the leaving isn’t why
you feel remorse.
It’s the leaving alone.
It’s the telling no one
what you knew. All the while
hoping he didn’t hurt
anyone else in the vast
empty wasteland of your silence.