How many times have I pulled out of your driveway

Unable to stop my chest from aching?

This dull ache….

I don’t know why it never ceases. 

We don’t look at each other. 

Just hand off our forlorn son,

Much like a wilted head of cabbage. 

Our son, with clear, confused eyes,

Our sad, somber trophy.

And if ever I could traverse the space of time

I would readily reclaim

That first delicate kiss

you so tenderly bequeathed.  

Cockroach

I survive

And sometimes that means following

The musky scent of rats

And congregating with roaches

But I stay alive

And am not entirely uncertain

I wouldn’t eat you if I had to.

Tracks

You’re there again

Choking on your disease

Black tar tracks and raw red mounds

Pickling your arms

And you’re grinning at everyone

On a tenacious rerun:

“I am doing great.  Things are going so good.”

High on your own ego

High with your pernicious demon

That kills you a little more each time.

And I ache for you. 

I’ll die with you.

Be left standing alone

Hating every single memory you left behind.  

All you desperate poets

Diligently searching for the perfect words

To describe your solitude, melancholy, the knives, the cuts,

Hopelessness, hatred, despondency, disease,

Famine of the Soul. 

But to me, depression is about

Hitting snooze twenty times on your alarm clock

Because getting out of bed is just….

Too.  Fucking.  Hard.  

Blunt Trauma

It’s that tone you take with me.

As if I am a telemarketer or

Your bloated cousin. 

I can stop talking if you want. 

Let the quietness drown out the pretention

And in the transparent lull

I can fully perceive

How empty your heart is..  

Color BLIND

I am white. 

If that made you cringe,

Then you won’t hear my voice

That is as inflamed, violent, as subdued and

Melancholy as yours. 

Just like you,

I traveled over flammable mounds of garbage,

In impenetrable alleyways.  I have heard the howls of

hopelessness and felt the impregnable void of loneliness. 

I too moved in a world constructed only for somebody else

and learned to navigate the darkness. 

Except,

I’m not really white.

Are you still listening? 

I am African. I am Latina.  I am Eskimo, Polynesian, Chinese, Mulatto,

I AM.

All of you.  

I’m a mistake cloaked in compassion,

I linger in your hallways, inhale your musky scent;

Cigarettes and oil;

I swallow your leftovers and amble in your stilted shadows;

Your anointed nymph, forever waiting

For your recovery.

But she waits too, with needles and tar.

A spineless debutante, caressing you with necrosis  

Replete with corpulent tranquilizers,

Unconditional numbness and love.

She’s a lumbering beast

With a fistful of pills and rancor.

And I understand

Why you choose her.