Before We Name the Villain
The villain stays the villain when the hero holds the pen;
the victor names the meaning of the blood upon the floor.
We judge a life by where its final chapter chose to end,
then close the book before we ask what happened there before.
Every scar has two sides, but only one is shown;
one gathers our compassion, one is sentenced with the blame.
The loudest grief is welcomed as the only grief we’ve known;
the quiet heart keeps breaking while the crowd repeats a name.
A voice is not more truthful just because it fills the room;
a whisper is not false because it trembles when it speaks.
Yet certainty attracts us like a lantern in the gloom,
while doubt is left to wander with the answers that it seeks.
We call our memory honest, but remembrance serves the need;
it edits every failure and enlarges every scar.
The ego writes its innocence in every selfish deed,
then points toward another so we will not see what we are.
No person wakes believing cruelty is their design;
we each become the hero in the mirror of the mind.
But goodness claimed in private does not make our actions kind;
the wounded we abandon know the truth we leave behind.
Blame offers easy shelter from the burden of our part;
it builds a wall of certainty where questions cannot live.
But wisdom enters only through a fracture in the heart,
when we can name the harm we caused and still choose to forgive.
The wounded sometimes wound; the frightened learn control;
the child refused affection learns to hide behind disguise.
Our suffering may explain us, but it cannot cleanse the soul;
we heal when we stop using pain to sanctify our lies.
Compassion is not blindness, and forgiveness is not flight;
to understand the darkness is not yielding to its claim.
We hold a person answerable without denying light,
for justice without mercy only changes hands of blame.
We are at once the hero, villain, witness, judge, and scar;
we are the ones who suffer and the ones who cause the pain.
The truth begins when we admit how incomplete we are;
humanity is mercy joined to honesty again.
…
DCG
The villain will always be the villain
if the hero tells the story
Every scar has two sides of pain
One gets sympathy; one gets blame
The world believes the loudest voice
Not the soul left without a choice
Truth often hides behind the glory
Because  history is written by the one who tells the story
— anonymous whispers