CHAPTER 7: MAYBE THE TRUTH
A poem by Nicole Homer helps Peter understand his story as a two-sided one.
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“Underbelly” by Nicole Homer
Peter Bruun
2019, 15”x22”, watercolor, gouache & pencil on paper
Walking back, sweating from the heat, I pluck at wild blueberries ripening by the roadside.
I have just read Underbelly. For the poet, a cautionary tale to a prospective love. I read it differently, the words offering a corrective lens on my relentless self-recrimination.
“In it I’m not the hero, but I’m not the villain either
so let’s say in the story I was human.”
This: a reframing; a maybe truth.
“Maybe the truth is: Both. Blade and guard.”
(The drawing: us split, left and right, blade and guard, poetry cradled between.)