Truth Teller: A Poem about Finding the Beauty and Fragility Within the Strong and Destructive Parts of Ourselves
April 14th, 2008 | Email this to your Friends~Written by Karen M. Reed
Truth Teller and Truth Hater are strolling through my life tonight.
An unlikely couple, one majestic, calm, and full of light—the other
dark, stooped, and empty.
I wonder what they are doing together—it hardly seems fitting,
and yet it is as if they are familiar this way—together,
yet distant.
I know they want to speak to me, so I listen with curious apprehension.
Says Truth Teller, “Come with me to the light—you’re already on your way.”
Truth Hater screams, “Don’t try it! I’ll kill you! You don’t belong there!”
I say to myself, “Surely this dark one is an enemy. I must rid myself of him.
Then surely I will sail into the light.”
I imagine ways to be free of Truth Hater, so certain he keeps me from
my freedom, I scramble for weapons to destroy him.
He frightens me with the intensity of his venom.
I think perhaps he can kill me.
But then a gentle whisper brushes my heart.
Truth Teller’s soft presence speaks to me:
“He is not who he seems. Fear not, keep walking,
I am here.”
I think, “Surely you are mistaken, Truth Teller. You must not see him clearly.
He hates me, and he’s strong, and evil. He is a destroyer of all I most want.
He will never let me live.”
Truth Teller sighs, “Ah, my dear one, I know that is how he appears to you, but I know him
from a higher place—I have a truth about him as well.
If you are willing to hear it, you will continue
on your journey to freedom.”
“What if I don’t believe there is any other truth about him?” I ask.
“Then are you so very different from he?”
The question pierces my heart, and I remember Truth Hater’s
stooped, broken body.
I wonder if he once stood tall and flowed with light—if I could touch him without fear.
I stop, and I wait for fear to fade and courage to emerge, uncertain that it will.
Truth Teller waits with me; his calm strength envelops me.
I find I cannot stay awake and slip into a peaceful, silent sleep.
It is comforting there—no voices to answer,
no choices to make.
When I awake, I continue my journey, expecting Truth Teller to share every step.
But he seems to have left me alone on the path. I must continue; where else would I go?
The light is where I belong—where I have always belonged.
Surely Truth Teller will be there when I arrive.
As I continue cautiously on, I realize I am not really alone at all.
There is a companion beside me who seems strangely familiar,
yet I cannot recognize him.
“Truth Teller, is that you?” I ask with anticipation.
“It could be, with your help,” comes the gentle reply.
“Truth Teller, how can I ever help you? You are strong and majestic and free.”
His reply startles me.
“You can help me by seeing what others do not: Once I was dark, and broken, and stooped.”
“Oh, Truth Teller, I cannot believe that of you, so full of beauty and light—
how could you ever be broken and dark?”
The answer comes gently from my familiar companion, now recognizable.
“Once seen in darkness, he was transformed by the light,” replies Truth Hater
as we walk side by side toward the light.
©Copyright 2007 Karen M. Reed. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. If you’d like to comment on this story, the author has given us permission to accept comments here. All comments are moderated.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:25 am
I get tripped up on truth.
When I was hurt as a kid, the detectives and prosecutors were interested in specific facts. My therapist calls that the forensic truth. It has been my belief for all these years that it was the forensic truth that is most important.
But forensic truth is absent of emotion. And my inability now to remember if I walked sixty feet or one hundred feet with to my perp’s car causes me to question the truth. I insist there is an objective truth. But I have not yet found it.
The emotional part, I am assured by my therapist is an important part of ‘my truth’. Objectively, it seems superfluous — dramatic — operatic even.
Yet it is the subjective, superfluous, dramatic, even operatic part that stays with me.
Truth is a challenge all around. And when I accept that the objective or forensic truth is a judicial tool, my own truth will find its voice and hopefully its proper place.