That Place

“History, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived,
  but if faced with courage need not be lived again.”  
                                 ― Maya Angelou  
 
 
I took a giant step backwards today  
into my past, I thought I had left it behind.  
I remembered the sting, the smart of rejection,  
of hatred, of shame;  
I heard it calling my name  
in my dead ascendants voice,  
calling from far away,  
calling me back to pain  
of dying in agony.  
The pain I hid from,  
never wanted to feel again,  
I was brought back to  
that place today.  
 
I wanted to scream out,  
but my words fell lame,  
my mouth fell open in vain.  
I couldn't believe I felt this way,  
so unmoved, so unable to react;  
I was immobilized in reliving this pain.  
It held me once again like before  
when I was weak, so did I  
become again.  
 
The whole world seemed there  
with me, in the past, in that place,  
stepping back in tandem so we all did,  
silently falling from God's grace.  
We, the survivors must tell the children,  
must shout, 'Don't go back there, to that place,  
it is grim and doesn't care, it will only  
forget you there to trap you  
in History's snare'.  
 
We cannot go back across  
a burning bridge without a care,  
'Look ahead', I say, 'Try to dare'.  
For the worst fate belies  
the ones left behind  
who cannot move ahead or rise  
to face our ascendants  
in our own eyes.  
 
      .....