When amends have been made,
lessons learned, responsibility nurtured,
maturation triggered…still, guilt lingers.
For years. Decades, lifetimes, and beyond…
guilt converges, amasses, amalgamates,
melds like plastic peanuts in a land dump,
perpetual, imperishable, perdurable.
Useless. Toxic. Malignant. Pernicious.
Toxic waste of the mind.
Enter the Guilt-Dump Dream.
The setting familiar, borrowed
from discarded dreams, a cruise ship
but parked, static, a part of the shore.
The cast familiar, my world, my people,
my guilt-gift-exchange posse
from ages past and present.
The guilt familiar, too. Inventory of books,
wasting space, testament to improvident choices.
Unfashionable, indecent,
surely-you’re-not-wearing-that
choices in my luggage, nothing else.
Promises made, promises broken,
I acted impulsively, avoided confrontation,
never where I should have been.
The finale found me under open-riser stairs,
Mother climbing them, me in open-front robe
hiding, caught, admonished by her eyes.
Unable to bear the guilt, I woke up,
leaving it all on the set.

I let the dog out,
climbed into bed though the alarm had rung,
woke late enough to start again
rebuilding my inventory of guilt.