PAD 13 - Rite Aid

For today’s prompt, write a family poem. It could be about your family, someone else’s family, a big family, a small family. It could be about one person in the family or a group picture. Your call. Just write that poem.

maybe this can count for the missing Guilty poem too....

Rite-Aid

I was about to not love you.

How could that be, but it was.

I was about to not love you.

I was about to hate you.

I remember that.

I remember saying that and knowing it.

I remember standing next to you

- how skinny you were

bones, really, bones, cuts, 

so many bruises

and I thought, I don't even know you

as you turned down an aisle

away from me, not even distant

just

utterly unknown: pure stranger.

I think I thought

I hate you

not then

then you were just a stranger

and I thought

who is this

but in those days

when your dark house was your only refuge

besides your activity of absolute obliteration

and the darkness filled our veins

    no matter our distance

and clutched our throats

    choked already for years with tears, fears, years of tears, and fears, founded

and love, useless

tough love, useless

tough

ambulances, silence,

phones, ringing, not ringing, silence, alarms, tears and the distance

growing and love, tough or kind love, forever love then - useless

and the darkness woke the children

and opened the drawers

looking, always looking

That wasn't the last vision, some woman,

with a coin purse

and broken hair

and cigarette scent

under the bright public lights

starving for something

then still visible

but it was the last day, our last outing

together, I might say.

We were in the pharmacy on the upper westside

looking for scar cream, conditioner, cigarettes.

I didn't even know her.

How could that be.

Very soon

you became you when you became bones

quite actually

and I could love you again.

Love rushed in 

on powerful, thundering, hard flapping wings.

Love ran through the streets

calling your name, calling out

I'll love you forever.

Family is everything. 

Family is forever.

At least there is that.

and I myself will die

with my devotion to your friendship,

your long ago through and through love,

your golden, then outcast, broken-winged soul.