His withered hands
Clutched the blanket
Drawn tight up against his chin.
The tiny room:
A dresser, a metal-frame bed,
Four walls.
Morning’s light,
A dull yellow-grey,
Eerily filtering in
Through the thin,
Drawn window shade.
Eyes fixated on the ceiling,
Paint peeling,
Cracks running this way and that…
A single tear
Making its way down his crusty cheek.

He saw her face,
Radiant,
Glowing!
He felt her lips
As she placed a kiss
On his forehead
Without so much as a word.

He cursed his thoughts,
Twisting into a fetal curl.
His paperback books
With their pretentious illustrations,
Fantasies of escape,
Read and discarded
On the floor, on the dresser,
Beside the dead moth
On the weathered window sill.

He struggled to stir their imagery
Long ago discarded, hidden
In the darkened corners of a feeble mind.

He shuddered now,
Not from cold,
Not from fear,
There was a knot in his gut.
Made manifest in sound,
Not a scream.
Not a moan,
One hand clenched
Into a fist.
Two words
Hammering inside,
Hammering:
Pain,
Why,
Pain,
Why,
Pain.
Such an insidious thing,
This
Pain,
This
Why.

It squeezed his eyes.
It made him
Aware of the dampness
On the wrestled bed sheet;
Wet where his face turned,
No matter how hard he tried
To push it away.

He felt the weight of her,
The mattress sinking
At his back.
She felt so comforting,
And yet,
He dared not abandon
The familiarity of his wretched fate,
Dared not to look upon that spectral face.




The shivering,
Convulsive now;
The breathing,
More like gasping.
Wishing he could let it go
Peel off the skin
Pluck out the eyes
Detonate the matter
That was brain.

In truth,
Sometimes,
He did not mind her company,
The numbness,
A disquieting comfort.

It was better this
Than the drugs and drink,
The self-inflicted rituals
That briefly scattered thoughts
Like dry leaves.
If
He could have raked them into piles,
Set them ablaze,
Undoubtedly he would have,
Years and tears ago.

It was in
This quiet desperation
That she had come,
Offering her existence,
Like the warmth
Of a teasing sun
On a cold winter’s morning;
A familiar voice calling out his name
In the dead of night.
She was not here for him;
Her motives undeniably
As transparent as her presence.




His mind adrift
In all things missing:
The family, the friends, the lovers,
Even the dog
Gone.

And now, alone,
Flotsam in a sea of strangers
For so many years
Reduced
To the construct
Of a marionette,
Moving in contorted steps
Attached to the strings
Of some superfluous routine.
The ventriloquist,
Unseen,
Obviously
Giving him breath,
Working his lips,
Spewing noxious sounds
From his toothless mouth,
Forever muttering
Some sad and suffering litany.

But he was quiet now
And she was not leaving.


Michael True 1-30-07 last edit 4-10-11