But a guarantee
01/29 2023
The son enters the room, and doesn't think about it:
The way his father lovingly, albeit drunkenly, embraces him,
How his mother sits still with her hands in her lap in the light burning dim.
How foolish, how naive, not seeing how it all fits.
Roaming the world in fear he might go on,
As the women come and go through his door;
The night with its comforting ruminations as he lays flat on the floor.
Love is but an unused ticket, secrets he needs, but he wishes gone.
Not that anything was missing, yet nothing was worth
The entry fee towards the sun and the light,
Shining brighter as it goes on, the more you fight.
Death is freeing as long as you never have to let go --- everything becomes
birth!
Sometimes only in the morning he thought of his childhood,
Of the expectations that come with unconditional love,
Of how he dreamt, once, but never let it to the surface above.
"Keep 'em comin' Billy boy, it'll tell me what I'm worth!"
One day in late September, as the rain piles on.
Familiar concrete streets, as cigarette smoke
Rises slowly from the earth to nostalgia's cloak.
And words he wished he'd said, at least once, rise, forever gone.
I can only hope that he'll simply see
The face of himself in the mirror, free.
And, walking with her, hand-in-hand, agree
To love that which is bound in iron, that plea.
Or, so the story goes, all it requires is a guarantee.