The girl could see the heavy metal gunpowder hour
about to break her cast from its battlefield bed
She was wearing a hangover that
wanted to close its eyes again,
but her Merlot saturated mind subconsciously
knew the ghost would only follow her
It seemed to enjoy chasing her back into
every white knuckled corpuscle creaking crevice
and cobwebbed corner of insanity as if it knew
sleep was where she was most susceptible

The last time the girl saw her alive she realized
she’d waited too long between visits because
by then the old woman was calling her “Mother”
There was a tragic kind of truth to it,
an unspoken justice of sorts that brought back
the pain of childhood memories
She was doing the Thorazine shuffle with
honey glazed eyes the girl couldn’t get through to
in some home away from home that smelled
like an over-sterilized bathroom instead of Apple Pie

The gunpowder hour began exploding into
flashes of white sky sunrise and mattress cliff suicide
She had buried the old woman, but the guilt,
and with it those final vomitus visions
remained alive just long enough
for her to borrow trouble from

Written by Sara Fielder © Apr 2015