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.
