I went to a poetry seminar for a couple of weeks and this is one of the things that spurred from a prompt we were given. Please feel free to tear it apart.
My mother sits alone
in a room filled with people,
speaking a language made with tears
within the arms of a girl who’s too big for her own body
and has no idea where their frequent tears come
to take this woman
who is beauty like a storm
created from the sound of blessing breaking
and nights found sleepless
made out in endless pacing.
With pills in her belly as we watch her fall to pieces,
eating ashes of her burned out self
that fervent prayers try to catch
but slipping through opened fingers that do not recognize
what she once was,
now begging for the strength of children
with bitter ashes of their own sweeping the sky
of all cleanliness
of the familiar.
as she stares without seeing their scars almost healed
as her own weep ice cream held under the sun
with her old happiness inside a locket never opened
choking her;
hanging her before she can find something
new
and cut it out to put in it something that will
relieve
the pain
of close throat leaking sobs that scream discontentment
and unleash a twisted demon chained
to that same locket
filled with those same ashes.
Except for those moments filled with unabashed laughter
born from words of hope and love
that span the ash choked light
and starts a candle shining like a feather soft
within the debris of past lives
of the same body.
the time before the thousand needles descending
from weak footprints
made by tortured feet
that look for more feathers so she can
once again have smile filled wings.
