All too well you play the role the one to teach a lesson…

This is not through intent to teach, but rather your didacticism can be found in your inability to comprehend just what impact you have made.

You hold more power in your hand than you know and to a child it seems a simple flower to crush.

To a flower there is an irrevocable change.

An empty Chair
Clean plates collect dust
Food warming on the stove begins to burn
Candles pooling in forgotten molten wells
Clock ticking

Listening
For car tires in the drive way
For keys clacking
For a knock
For anything

The soufflé has fallen
The condensation on two glasses weeps
The rings that will be left on the table are not thought of
The asparagus wrinkles and is past well done
Hands turn
The wine bottle lightens
Thoughts of throwing dishes
“I’ll be home at seven”

Comes home at seven
In the morning
To a smoke filled kitchen
To a set table
To wicks burned down to hilts
To a melted ice cubes
To dried blackened memories of a once perfectly cooked meal
To carefully folded napkins
To wilted flowers

To an empty house and a still open back door

Pretty flowers fade
Memorial arrangements
Petals drift to stones
Sand in hour glasses falls
Like blooms, live while time abides

Sheet music pages
Played piano for ten years
Dust covered keys wait
Young dreams now yellowed and dry
Old stiff fingers can bend still

Petrichor notes hang
Glassy pavement cracks glisten
Rose buds bloom softly
Memory does not wash out
Yet more than dust rinses past

Have you ever seen a bright eyed
Glowing person
Sober three years
Pull a dime bag out of her purse

It may have been three years
But the person reflected back up at her
From that small mirror
Is not the person in front of you;
It’ll be the same person she was three years ago
It’ll reflects her long forgotten face, but also will be a window into her own personal rock bottom
It is a hotel room key to a tailor made suite in a town she never should have visited
This is not the face she dreamed of growing up to see reflected in her astronaut helmet
Her self-image disappointingly is only eclipsed by passing streetlights
And not the skylines of glitter scattered on the earth’s outline
It would have been a beautiful circumspective background
But she can’t look from aircraft window microscopes now
Now she sits viewing the world through city bus window magnifying glasses
And she worked hard to get here
She earned her urban lab coat and degree from the harsh alleyway lessons
And a life path of two steps forwards one step back
And three here forwards
And a few more back
And really
It’d be a shame to wear out a perfectly good pair of shoes to make this journey all for not

Don’t get in my way.
Let’s put it modestly…
I will destroy you.