Before & After

10Nov08

Before

When we were young, we knew who we wanted to be.

We were told how to be and what to say.

You felt punished for being different. I reveled in our strangeness…

Then the years of bliss were over, we were cast out in the freezing water

to reemerge on distant shores. We were fixed and could not move

the world that once held all colors turned a violent shade of blue.

After,

Fields of massacred flowers wept with swollen allergic eyes

as forget-me-nots hid under wild burning grass. After the earth cooled

it revealed the twisted bark of blackened trees. Dead animals stared

with charcoal eyes howling in pain as they soaked into the soil.

I hate what I’ve become, heart hanging from one thread

pulsating like a rotting corpse. You vomit these words into my ear at 3am.

I cleanse my mind of our late night telephone conversations.

You continue to wash your face in a marble sink that resembles

a gravestone splattered in toothpaste. Epitaphs are grim

but crooked smiles still encourage progress.

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