I thirst.

 

You rip through here

a hurricane

biting through civilians and officials alike

until their bloodshed stains the streets

and the streams tick off the tally of your victims

your only aim to crush and maim

regardless of the death toll

or the reason

or the phasing of the moon

And then come crashing down again

 

while we are left, shaking our heads,

to sweep your secrets

into crematoria and coffins

Then dust off our hands

to wipe away your tears

 

and scrub away the fever

That leaves a ring of soapy sickness

in your bathwater

And then hold you,

bitter infant,

until the tide falls away

 

The constants, the healers,

What some call the mothers

though you are not our blood children

 

We are the ones that soothe your cuts and burns

Listen to your side of the story

And settle the fights of dollar bills

and ancestors

that you scorn without abandon

Hear you simper for a lullaby

As we rock you back to sleep

 

But the sighs don’t escape

until after we’ve checked under the bed for monsters

for the hundredth

or the thousandth

or the millionth time this week;

we can’t let you catch on

that the only real beasts lie within ourselves.

 

We would give you the moon

Had you not tamed it

And the deserts for your sandbox

But no matter what we give

You want it all you want it all

And we want nothing

NOTHING

in return

Just a single peaceful night,

vengeful child,

tea stirred with vanilla and sleep

but your screamings pierce our dreams

and nightmares

 

We are the worrywarts

The unsure

The cautious and the skeptics

Who don’t believe in jumping on the bed

Or in other such adventures

 

We are wrinkled brows and unpressed collars

The “it’s for your own good”s and the seamstresses

That stitch your heart back together

Before it’s broken one time too many

 

And you end up like us.

 

We are the aftermath, the backstory,

the prayers and dictionaries

that make it out of life alive

The Barmecidal harmony, the snatches of hymns

 

We are the scraps of coffee-tainted paper

that you slap against the telephone poles

As if the taste of scathing news-ink

is a bandage for the hurting

And we fold debris into our kerchiefs

saving them as souvenirs

 

And you call us close-minded

You call us cowards

As you snap your jaws and roar

down a vast and lonesome prairie

like the wind

 

Fast to laugh

and quick to run away

 

As we wander the streets lonely,

the gaslamps shattered on the cobblestones,

and stoop to collect the pieces

of the life you left behind.

 

Forgive them, Father,

for they know not what they do.