Without You

Spirits hide in fists
Of the left-behinds.
Hide in hearts
Of the unresolved.

Wind
With its teeth bared
Growling, drooling,
Prowling
Through death markers.
Cobblestones.

You lay here.

Closer. Closer
To your decay.
Rotting. Wretched.

I’ll reach into the mud
Into the death dirt.

“Please,” I’ll say.

And as my hand tightens
On your bare bones
You will waken from your hell.
Raked with set jaw and full force.
Dragged, pried, crushed into re-existence.
Sucked into your corpse.

Your old sailor bones will be brittle.
Your mouth empty of teeth long rotted away.
Your decrepit lungs expanding and collapsing. Wet hollow gags.
Your eyes rolling into the back of your head, working to focus on the nothing left inside.


No compassion.
No mercy.
As every last bit of you is thrown to the ground.
Garbage.

“Look at her.
My mother.
Your daughter.
See her bruises. Her bruises.
Mind and body bruises.
See her bruises.

See the frailty of her jaw.
Broken.
See the delicate line of her body.
Twisted.

Because of you.

See the way she’s grown.
See the way she has loved.
See the way she has given.

The way she’s learned without you.

-- Without you.”





(assignment #1: Grandparent poem)