Thank you.
Today you handed me an envelope
And inside I found a message
The words you wrote seemed to boast of love
But at second glance, when Truth decided it no longer wished to share a room with Hatred, I felt as if I had collided with your passionate discrimination
There are so many like you
Who when they speak, they seem so kind
But when you dissect their words and look them in the eye
You can hear their sneering voice and see their giddy guilty tremble
How can you despise people so blindly, willingly?
To those of you who weave your words of hate, how can you smile to my face?
How lonely you must be to have to carry such a burden
Of trying to sustain the lies that you have embedded into so many lives
I must say thank you, though
Because through this you've taught me what it is to be a friend
You've shown me how to identify my enemies and still,
Though my heart may yearn for vengeance,
To treat them with no lesser kindness or compassion
Because if you lash out, they have won
My elders have always told me, "you reap what you sew."
I didn't understand the meaning of those words until I made a few mistakes of my own
And so I must thank you, those of you who've lied and cheated and stolen from me
You showed me the consequences of living a life like your own
Laid them out like blueprints for show
And even now, you cannot see that in the end, when your last breaths are seeping from your chest,
You.
Will be lying on your death bed.
Alone.
Because one day, after you have run out if reasons and rhymes,
And you can no longer spin a new lie
To cover for the last one that people decided they just couldn't turn a blind eye
The people that you have claimed to care about all of your life
Will have grown tired of trying to tell the difference between
All of your angles and means
Of telling a tale that you say had happened and the real ones
You take advantage of people's doubts and suppress anything that may expose you
You expect a raise instead of a decline of the relationship connections you have
But what you expect, with the things that you do to whomever steps into your life, is something from a fantasy
You're like the lost "villains" trying to right lives with more wrongs
You're trying to grow your wings but then you're the one cutting them off
You cripple those around you with your falsified statements
And lately I've been thinking maybe it isn't too late
For you to turn around and to choose a date
To apologize for the latest false accusation
But then you continue on with whatever dance that this is
You've got my mind reeling trying to explain it
Until I finally realize that you are never going to stop
Because no matter what you got it never seems to be good enough
So here's all the damage and the pain and the rage
I use to believe that family meant something to you
But all family ever was to you was a name.
So thank you.
You're free to go.