Knowlingly

As you sit in the emergency room,
a toddler climbing restlessly all about you
no extra hands in sight,
to help
to hold

Your eyes puffy from tears
of how you got to this place
how your life fell so off course
Or perhaps from
the pain in your
shoulder, hand, face or arm
fresh bruising
appears
as the sunrises

But you stay
allowing another person to treat you
in a way
that shows no love
no honor
and
whittles away at you
a bit at a time


The scar tissue takes hold
in side of us
a place
doctors cannot reach
or mend
and we sit
you and I
waiting
for our names to be called
our turn
our time
as we glance at one another
knowingly

memories haunt

cracked

dull

pulsing

emptiness

in the

dark

corners

of

my

heart

my

mind

haunted

still

with

memories

photo credit

RIP

There was no denial of it, there was no covering it up, there is only the raspy, labored breaths and the harsh reality that all that lives must end one day, and bitterly underneath that was the fact that I cannot change it, I can only witness it. My husband is driving like a bat out of hell and talking but I do not hear him because I am lost in my storm of desperate and maddening thoughts while Boo stands in the backseat trying to balance himself in the middle, sticking his Bulldog face up between the front seats. He is drooling like never before and now there are secretions coming from his nose, as I wipe at them I wonder if this is how it ends, drowning in his own fluids? I look out the front window crying like a child for a moment, in an attempt to escape this ache in my heart but then sucking in a deep breath and unbuckling my seat belt I kneel on the passenger side seat so that I am facing into the back where Boo looks at me, stops pacing and for the first time in 24 hours lays down. I put my hands on him and he is still breathing as I begin to softly talk to him of how I love him and how wonderful he is, I plead for him to hang on a little bit longer, we are almost there I tell him, attempting to reassure myself. Within less than a minute, I realize he has stopped breathing, he won’t respond to me, not my voice, not my touch, he is gone and I am changed forever.

Broken

i am the loose thread in the weave

the black sheep

that you percieve

the piece of the puzzle

that fell on the floor

lost for the ages

ever more

the one who cried

and made the most noise

the one who pained

and felt little joy

what did you do

to make me fear

enough to sleep with a kitchen knife near

what was I thinking in my childs head

to hide on the floor

beside my bed

i waited for darkness

to keep me safe

i waited to grow up

and get away

but now you see

i am haunted still

by the mother who hated

and the daughter who feared

She's got the whole world in her hands...

I was crying, not the sobbing, moaning type but instead the silent scared kind of tears that slid down my cold red cheeks only to be frozen on my scarf which your beautiful little head was nuzzling into for warmth. We waited for the bus as the blizzard kept on, the freezing wind biting my cheeks as I did my best to shield you from the cold. After a while I gave up on waiting and began walking down Peterson Avenue in the direction of home stopping along the way as needed to put you, your diaper bag and my purse down in order to stretch my arms and back. You would look up at me scared and cold, demanding to be picked back up with your little arms reached out and your eyes pleading just above your little cherry nose. I move ungracefully in the 2 feet of snow and I no longer feel my toes but you nuzzle your face in the warmth of my neck and your runny nose takes my warmth as I make my way through the drift's of snow where the sidewalk once was. Eventually I stopped looking back for the bus, stopped hoping it would come and understood that I was on my own, you were completely in my hands and the sheer enormity of that brought fresh tears to my eyes as I kept on making my way home.