Holding on the hope you will return
For a moment think that you have
Brief impulse is all that I've earned
Resist coming completely back

I'm lying beneath skies full of stars
Frozen ground padding my head
Weakly wondering where you are
Pushing up buried expressions unsaid

The deep roots are tough to rip loose
They've been planted profoundly for so long
Forlorn because I failed to use
Fearing they'd come out wrong

Anguish has now awakened
Manifestation of my flaws
Regretting the path taken
Past a parasite that gnaws

The thought of freedom makes me laugh
Existing but actually dead
Like the way I cope with being half
Acting like I'm whole instead

Isolation is an alien feeling
Heard stories but had no clue
Hardly remember what it means to start healing
Never had a cut as deep as you

-

in a landfill one day i saw an
immigrant family take an old
bed and strap it across the top
of a banged up SUV that was

missing it's left front clip, the
headlight was taped where a
socket would have held it,
like a discombobulated eyeball

clearly marked on the edge
of the mattress was the
following in Red Sharpie—

"DO NOT SALVAGE"

the same warning i remember  
writing on Momma's deathbed
decades earlier, her stain clearly
visible on one side.

there was nothing to be said, 
even if i could speak fluently
against what was apparently

—for them—

clearly accepted
terms...


s jones
Mar 2021


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