The House  

It rose like an ancient evil omen
from the mouth of the volcano,
monument to the oncoming
dissolution of the marriage,
a union churning
five thousand plus days.
It was your twisted dream house
hammered into reality
with a chunk of inheritance
snatched from my pocket of grief
as I lay curled up in mourning. 

It scabbed around a framework
rotting with disappointments
of one hundred-sixty-eight months.
Layers of four souls
shingled the roof
over cavernous rooms
filled with misery,
four disjointed lives. 

No sweet-flowing laughter
echoed from walls
congested with angry words,
silent screams.
Long-winded summer months
breathed waves of heated anger,
sucked at lungs struggling for air,
dilated the pores
of every room.
Cruel winter storms
circled, roared,
spit frozen daggers
through vulnerable cracks. 

The volcano oozed its disease
from beneath this house of shadows,
tainting the landscape.
On still nights
the bronze voice of Cerberus
drummed the darkness-
a portent for the day
you locked up the children,
two green saplings
struggling to flourish
inside the molten core,
threw open the door
and ordered my exile. 

Eroded within,
body scorched by countless eruptions,
I packed a deflated mattress of dreams,
one-half of each child’s heart
carefully preserved in a clear bottle
and stumbled down the ruins blinded
by light in a new world.
Like a survivor of Pompeii
I shed the ash-laden cloak of seventeen years. 

The price of freedom
left our children hostage
in that house
until their majority when,
they too emerged from the stagnant cavity. 

You chose to remain captive
in your house,
squatting over the extinct volcano,
the hollow mountain, crumbling,
sagging inward
to collapse, someday,
burying you
without benefit of death.
When you call out to the children
who dig through the rubble
crying your name,
their tears falling like hot wax
to seal your tomb,
the words will be lost
in the River Acheron,
heard only by Charon
who will turn a deaf ear,
denying you refuge. 

Deep within the unconscious
collective dream of our children
I descend
to offer a cup of mercy
drawn from the heart of the River Lethe. 

Copyright © 1987 Pam Patterson