Your Blessings: A Narrative Poem

For someday.

She stands over her baby’s grave.
So small, she thinks, how far, yet so near!
She tears.
The earth drinks
Of her bitterness, of her sorrow.
She drops on her knees,
Too beat to look up, so torn inside.
The sky darkens, as her withins darken;
Cold creeps with the wind, and into her heart,
O’, ice-cold heart—it freezes cold.
Her feet’s soles feel sore,
Like the rest of her will, eventually.
When she does look up,
It is with troubled eyes and a puzzled mind.
“Why?” She asks, “Why do you give to take?”

He stands over her grave too, sometime later;
His heart is void, his mind is packed.
Insane, he thinks, how insane, to believe
In forever, a fallacy!
He counts his losses, he picks his pieces—
He lives with them, even walks with them
To a bar; he sits them beside him.
“Cheers, my man!” He drinks.
“Ah, my lady! cheers, cheers…” He gulps.
Insane, he thinks, look where this love
Has driven me!
But, really, really… It is his feet.
Drunk to oblivion,
He staggers out, drops on his knees,
And looks up at the sky.
“Cheee-hi-hi-hi-ers! Yes! Yes!” He laughs, drinks,
And tears. He gasps for air,
And tears.
The earth drinks
Of his sorrow, of his bitterness.
“Why!” He screams, “Why give at all if to take! Huh?”

I stand over my grave, someday;
I think of my promises and my failures,
I think of my falls and my rises,
I think of love and little of life,
I think of you.
This was it, huh?
What a ride, though. What a ride!
I think some more.
I see me crashing my head
Into a wall, thinking of you,
While yet I drew breath.
I see me tearing over you, and over us,
And over plenty.
I see me running the wild dubbed “love.”
That’s part of the whole thing, though—
Only part of it, only part of it…
But, see, I do not think much
About the good stuff
Because it was perfect.
It is the ugly stuff that keeps me up,
Out here, looking back
At a time I understood little,
And cared little about plenty.
Ah, look here, look here…
If only I could. If only I could.
It is the “Why” that got me here,
But look, oh, look here…
If only I could. If only I could.
The good you do not ask for,
Like the good you do, is a blessing;
When you lose it, lose it with thanks.
But do not lose yourself too,
For you then lose two blessings.
Oh, look here, look here…
If only I could. If only I could.

##

Photo by Sanketh Hiremath on Unsplash