Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jul 2010
The old man living in the motel
No one knows his name
Not a clue to his shame
Or the story he has to tell.

Hair as white as the clouds in the sky
Small and fragile with a hunch
Lives alone, makes his own lunch
Day after day, he asks himself why.

Suffers from severe depression
His wife left for another man
She never seemed to give a ****
Where she is now is out of the question.

Stole his kids, broke his heart
Makes him cry every night
Struggles with his thoughts at night
Lets it go with his pieces of art

Takes a routine every morning and draws
Finishes them, hangs them on the walls
These masterpieces fill the halls
Every one of them has no flaws

Isolation is normal to this man
Makes no contact with others
Even ignored by his own two brothers
But it ended as quickly as it began.

Days at a time he goes without meals,
Slowly he gets more thin and weak
Grisly, he grows a skeletal physique
His appearance portrays how he feels.

For many years this is how he’s lived
No one is around to tend to him
Many avoid his appearance grim
Nearing the end of his life contrived.

Sitting on the sill is a bottle of pills
Which he thinks about every night,
Each day by he thinks he might
But his fear of the end gives him chills.

With pills in hand he starts to pray
He looks around his room and sighs
He closes his eyes, ready for his demise
Too cowardly, he throws them away.

Let nature run its course
It’s what he wants to do
After all he goes through
He goes to sleep full of remorse.

He cannot deny he misses his ex-wife,
He was her high school sweetheart
But after twenty years they fell apart
She was the biggest mistake in his life.

He dreamt of his family at last
Pictured his little girl’s smiling face
The girl that he’d once again embrace
That was the night the old man passed.
© July 17, 2010. Shanna Howse.
Shanna Howse
Written by
Shanna Howse
730
   ---
Please log in to view and add comments on poems