Unconditionally Conditioned

Today's journal poem. Interested to see how it will play out.... Here's hoping for no conditions.

Unconditionally Conditioned

By Erin Lee

For twenty years she rolled her eyes at the word “unconditional,”

unconditionally conditioned to know better.

Her sweat paid the bills, their bills, and they looked at her with contempt

as ink from a selfish pen scratched the check book.

She knew better, all those years, to show them the rainbows inside her spirit �"

so green it shames the foliage at The House by the Side of the Road;

where hungry frogs bite at love notes spun in vines.

 

She could taste their frustrations. Her ears trained now, to hear the sighs

they tried to stuff in drawers. Her hearing was impeccable.

Bitter, lemon innuendos that came with mandatory meetings

And promises they had no intentions of keeping.

 

Yet, he looked straight into her eyes, cupping her chin in his palm

like the basketball still bouncing in the driveway; pliable.

His words were the kind of softness that comes from dandelions

too ripe to stand another day of holding back wishes.

“But you know, deep down, she loves you, right?”

 

Unconditionally conditioned.