Walk the Dog. Shine the light.

The red mists of anger have cleared.

I try to remember kindness

as easily as those sour mornings

that followed nights spent

in soundless recrimination, days

when the air boiled with shouts. I could

track time by the tears on my face.

 

Five o'clock is when we fight, chew

on our bitterness, swallow it with meals

I won't digest, measuring out my rage

as the baby's bathwater runs. Our battleground

is strewn with Legos, frothed in Mr. Bubble,

but thick and murky as a still pond.

 

Walk the dog. Shine the light

on every metaphor in our destruction,

so why have we mixed so gently in children?

Every knife edge of our difference

is dulled there, our generations pass

to resonstitute a better us. My senses

won't remember you correctly, as if

I've drawn the curtain on what once was.

 

Decay tastes like smoke, ashes

of a flame that once burned bright.

 

 

 

Reviews

[Tara]

Another one to add to my list. "I could track time by the tears on my face" Interesting and intriguing commentary on a relationship during the "young children" years. My only stumble was with your last stanza...it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the write or else it needed some additional lines after it to make the ending stronger.

[Tim McGovern]

That 3rd verse is fantastic.
Some great images, and yeah, the bitterness is mixed with a sad understanding.
it is now past,and you can feel that.
Wonderful poem Shemeh

[Pinky]

thats great...you did a good job describeing the bitterness...