I Will Listen Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

I do not intend to lecture you.
Whatever peace I may have attained
I have come to through my own pain
And in trying to explain it to you
It would melt away like rice paper in the rain.

I will not write you a poem
Filled with sympathy
Brimming with wisdom
Something you can carry with you
Or stick to your refrigerator door.

I have no right to assume
That my words can heal you,
That mere empathy can assuage
The fear, the hurt, the shame
That you carry like dead weight.

But I will listen
Not to what interests me
Or what I can put to use
But to what you need me to hear
In your own time
In your own voice.

I find your anger beautiful
Because it burns like letters from ex-lovers,
Or photos from times you have left behind,
It produces smoke to kill the wasps
That had nested in your memories
Buzzing and stinging you in your sleep.

It purifies.
It returns your mind to an emptier state
It erases the social contract you had allowed to bind you
And allows you to rewrite your own demands
On yourself,
On your loved ones,
On strangers.

And in your new freedom, I admire you.
I will remember your life as you have shared it.
I will keep in mind that I have no idea what others have suffered
And I will try to see beneath the persona and respect the person.