I never was one for poetry.
An old woman but a stones throw from my toil died three days ago.
Choked to death on accumulated trinkets and memories.
Suffocated on a life time of worth and work.
The four cutters sitting on her charred porch hang their heads in somber exhaustion.
I’m ten minutes late, in my frustration forgetting the world is larger than my own.
Like the time that man on the bridge kept us from home for an hour, and we complained, but our gripe soon turned to grief.
The bed creeks under my own weight but only one side has fallen through the frame.
For the first time, half broken is the greater of two sadnesses.
I pass the days in a half woken stupor, playing out scenarios of your life’s future splendor.
But I still crack that melancholy smile despite your hate, because nobody else will know the way my thumb slid to the pit of your ear.
Maybe you miss it too.
On rainy days like this one, the boys can’t tell the difference between tears or rain.

Her Two Cents

On rainy days
I still crack that melancholy smile
trinkets and memories, worth and work
half broken, half woken
nobody else will know
life’s future splendor is larger than my own
Maybe you miss it too.