lillie

Looking to the floor
the bleakness in your eyes
as you speak of a life
in your dreams.

A family, a husband
a house to clean
and a dinner to cook;
a man to wait on hand and foot.

You speak in rapid religious outbursts
shifting from one rapid thought
to the next
as reality fluctuates.

Tears now as you
spill the pain of the life
you never had the chance of living
because of your mental illness.

Your mind broken,
damaged by the torrent of thoughts
years of untreated illness
and moments of chemical bliss.

A verdict handed down from on high
as if despite your unwavering faith
the spirit was taken
from you child.

shaking hands

My back to the door
as I exhale the heartache;
the words of childhood beatings,
a drunken fathers pain continues into today.

I cannot help but stare
as you speak of sadness, the hollow in your soul,
at the fresh wounds on your wrists
the dried blood still clinging as a foreign reminder
of your attempt to escape into the night.

I wonder how your wife
would have heard the news of your
suicide
had you not stopped at the superficial dermis
and allowed the scissors to work true to fashion
into those pulsating vessels beneath your weathered hands.

The air now acrid
an admixture of tears and days old scotch
breathed into the daylight
of a hospital morning.

Your hands tell the depth of your story
not the wounds on the surface
but the grime worn into the keratinous layers
wringing with each word of "manhood" and "death."

Your hand-shake a firm grasp
conveys respect, anger, frustration
and your pain buried in the torments of youth
at the hands of a father,
and the resilience of time.