Category: Creative writing

when last he wept

I think of you more often than I should

Strangely, I ponder the secrets you kept,

And I wonder, would you return if you could?

While your heartbeat slowed, soundly we slept;

Had we known you’d be gone perhaps we would

Have held your eyes within ours and wept,

And made amends like good children should.

Beneath threadbare rugs all offenses we’d have swept–

We would return to any moment with you, if we could.

Perhaps we would have opened our arms and lept;

And, your arms outstretched, perhaps you would

Catch us; instead, unknowing, we slept.

We need not speak what is understood:

But when he looked upon you, a child, he wept.

I think of this more often than I should.

Did you struggle for time with him while we slept?

If he called you back–would you come? If you could?

Was your love for him one of the secrets you kept?

It is far too long since last he wept.

blood

Memories: birthdays, holidays, deaths

All colored with the splatter of blood

On the wall and hair ground out

From the root and the hollow

Eyes that saw nothing

And the raw ears that heard nothing. 
I mark time with the lines the switch made:

Eight for my eighth. One less for ten. 
You remember the cake–your favorite–

And the visit from your mother

I remember the disarray

And his boot print on your shirt.
You remember the songs we sang

I remember my voice quavering

Silencing

The baby, hurting myself so it would hurt less

Trying and failing perfection over and again 

Desperate to keep him happy. 
In the silence and the sound

I feel the calloused ridges

Of his palm; you remember it gentle

And protective

I remember the sting and dizziness. 
Now you forget and your eyes pretend

And I swallow past the lump in my throat

And I am careful not to make him angry

And every fist he makes 

Feels connected to the other fists that connected 

And you will not remember and 

Dammit, forget it, your eyes demand. 
But you will not remember

And I cannot forget.

That is the nature of memories.

And I have the scar, raised and straight

The perfect shadow of a half buried root. 

It lays somberly across my thigh;

I trace it every now and then.

I feel the blood that runs deep beneath

Wondering if it will ever break through.