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You danced like Cinderella
Smiling, looking fine
We should have known much better
But we failed to see those signs.
You were always playing to the crowd
Laughing all the time
And always forever joking
But we failed to see those signs.
Everything seemed so normal
We were busy with our lives
You always seemed quite happy
But we failed to see those signs.
You suddenly took up drinking
Drinking too much wine
We really should have noticed
But we failed to see those signs.
Now you're no longer with us
Things were on your mind
It may have been much different
If we only saw those signs.
I lost my sister 13 years ago to suicide, people can disguise their pain but if we look carefully we will see the signs before it is too late.
After saying that, it is not so easy to spot those signs sometimes.
 Nov 2017 Angela Baerthel
L B
What She Look Like?
  
…Like one
tenderly hushing
water in her lap
Elemental peace
No place to go
No more to be
…Like the ocean
in the background
of a photo on a warm spring day
belying
rage
and the random possible
thrash--

out!

at all guilty ******* in her path
Toss in the next sentient soul
who should happen to pass
within range
who should have seen
who should have known
what a storm could do….

Moody in the aftermath
and sorrier than rain
With the tide in retreat
grumbling excuses
Hiding out waist-deep in dusk’s Merlot
Waiting for night to sleep it off

to heal the rifts
cleanse the shame

Rising
yellow, bright— and

“What the hell happened, here?!”

____


Her hair
a winter’s tragedy of trees
upside down—
No wait— the wind has put her right
to ragged random branches
swaying, wet with intermittent hues
of dark and silver
caught in collar, flying inelegant and free
at the shoulders of the levee
tossed and softening shyly
sagging jaw and nose a stump of tree
All perspective changes…

if you watch a while—

She’ll raise her eyes
into the sunset
to catch an eagle
entering
flight

…and then you might…

___

She looks like—
a pudgy robin
querying grass
mud soaked
that hides the fire of her breast
tugging at a worm
more than half her length
“I will feed them, **** you!
Give it up, you son of a snake!”
_____

...Don’t miss her hour of music though
for anything
Encroaching darkness
from the rooftops
she listens to the hearts she breaks

Remember this in winter
she can give but she will take
it out on February
when you’re longing
for her
Only male robins do the singing; females do the choosing.  

There are very few recent  photos of me.  Thus this poem.
 Nov 2017 Angela Baerthel
Iska
Hello.
I am the trending poem.                                                            ­            
         you see me and I make you feel alive
                                             so you like me and re-post me
                                                              ­    then you leave me alone to die.
Hello,
I am your forgotten lines.
             you created me with a careful love
                                                          an­d decisive rhymes
                                      and then to the bottom of your page I'm shoved.
Hello
I am forgotten, alone and unloved
                           a faded smile a broken dove
                                               I once was beautiful, touching.
                                                       ­   now, I've been replaced, I'm nothing.
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