In those dark ruins I sat before her
and looked into the depths of her vacant eyes.
Something called to me- Something from the loneliness,
Something from the terror-
Something from the picture on the telephone counter
where she smiled as a little girl.
And who could say or predict that one day that happy, innocent child,
who grew up with sincere caresses of love,
would try to murder herself on the last moon of this month,
with a tarnished dirty needle,
that promised no feeling,
that promised chains of escape,
that promised no choices would need to be made any longer.
An iris flower bloomed from the kitchen table’s blue translucent vase;
The flower I gave her for her birthday.
I hoped she would see that I saw her in that blossoming glass.
But, how could she? How could she?
That vase turned slowly, wickedly to a pipe, to a syringe,
to a good-bye I could not mutter.
Oh trust in the Lord above,
"for He shall make everything beautiful in its time."
That is when she clutched my neck, hugging me so urgently,
shaking-afraid of everything that was not heroic.
Hero, Heroism, Heroine- I loathe such words of fallacy, of truth,
of victory over the innocent’s surrender.
And the slavery of sensation shall not surrender the soul I cried for
each night.
She marked me her angel, sent from somewhere,
The One who would always feel- for me,
for the trembling child I held so weakly in my arms,
pleading how she did truly love me behind those doped-up eyes.
Tears fall from this pounding sky
And there is not enough soul or faith or listening ears
that could transcend all this pain around us.
So we clung to each other, begging for an absolution,
for some prayer we had not been taught.
I wanted so badly to save her
To tell her the truth, only she possessed so lost inside.
But, it was not my job,
It was not my place,
It was not my shame.
I try to remember and believe this every single day I am here.
