My first job, if you will, was fretting about my family
as if a 12-year-old could form a clear picture
I knew joy and laughter were sorely absent
in this festering family abscess
but lacked the experience to formulate how askew we were
as silence dripped into a pervasive roar
It was the day in-day out, unadorned resignation
kinship and camaraderie absent
during my solitary life of reading and writing and wondering
but never sharing
So why not perform an exorcism on this loneliness and solitude?
neither was welcomed
and import touch, embrace and warmth
Ha!!! The goddamn lesson I learned is that hope and deserving fall woefully short when butting heads with colossal need
that children will inherit the legacy when adults are woefully damaged
that it’s carved in caves prehistoric and never not to be
For a child cannot fix parents
