It leaves on a midnight search and seizure
to rehab in Arapahoe, Wyoming.
It leaves with grimy charcoal high top Converse
and a distasteful orange hunter-green flannel.
Bloodshot eyed and strung out on residual
******* hidden in the inner brims of his precious nose,
It leaves fingers torn from the doorframe and without
saying a word to her for years.
It arrives a forgotten promise
clean-sobered with a rough pair of brimstone arms
and scarlett-feathered lips.
It arrives gently holding a wooden ring
dark carved in detox and an “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
Apologizing thumbs nip tightly down the hem of her hips,
It arrives delicious and inviting like the scent of
fresh pasta on a hot alabaster plate.
It leaves, again,
high and full-bellied satisfied with the final use
of an old habit.
It leaves without a word of those whispered childhood
embraces on young October nights.
Leather jacket in hand and Oxford shoes out the door,
It leaves — between the scent of
laundried cotton and lavender sage candles —
It leaves
carrying in its dark pockets all her untreated, distasteful addictions too.
September 22, 2014 // 7:04 AM
Inspired by the poem “Where Does Joy Come In?” by Charles H. Webb