Dissolve

Maybe forgiveness changes too much,
He said. It’s too powerful an act,
Too dangerous, extreme. What you want

Is a story you can remember,
Which means something packaged, with an end—
Terminal or serial is fine,

But end before you begin again.
Forgiveness is anti-narrative.
It eats away wherever it spills,

An acid on any incident.
As a device, it’s like amnesias,
Comas, and it-was-all-a-dream scenes.

It half destroys everything before,
Invalidates the causal sequence.
It’s good for keeping story open,

The way leeches are good for bleeding,
Anti-coagulant. Then he paused.
But if you can live outside the tale. . . .