He lingers around the house
Waiting to feed me and wait on me
Hand and foot.
But his hands and feet were never
Waiting for me before.
They were busy doing other things
Playing on his phone
Walking to the couch
Walking to the bathroom
to relieve unhealthy bowels
Twiddling his credit card
out of his wallet
To pay for one more
unhealthy thing
One cigarette
One piece of nicotine gum
One dream gone wrong
where we could have
and should have but didn’t
We could have had a rich life.
A life rich.
A richliferichlifeliferichliferich
In more than money and materials
In love
In trust
In working together to solve problems
In showing me in three seconds
what took someone a year to figure out
In taking one extra step to be
great rather than settling on just being okay.
Because he knew okay was never okay for me.
He knew okay was my worst enemy
So why did he continue down that way
Why did he think that was okay?
It was not
It wasn’t even mediocre
And now he lingers.
Trying to swerve in my direction
when I run to the pantry
Or go to feed the kids
He gets up in the middle of his dinner
That he insisted we all be there for
So he can turn on the television
And feed the dogs mid-bite.
All because he wanted
the control of getting us to the table
Only so he could look at his pretty
dolls sitting on their arranged shelves
But not play with us or take us out of the box
Because someday we’d be worth money
and he’d like to capitalize on that
Even though he fucking hates capitalism
but doesn’t quite know why
He only sought out
his hatred skin-deep
and settled on that reason
Without researching
how it could have
helped us if we would have played around with it.
How we could have toyed with it
so it worked in our favor.
How we could have fucking
beat the beast instead
Of complaining about it
twenty-four hours a day.
Or maybe it was because
he didn’t know
what he would do with us
when he got us out
Maybe we would run away.
Maybe we would go tell everyone how
he was poisoning us
with his lies and negativity
His lack thereof
of movement and reciprocity
The bane of his existence,
living a full life.
He’ll not know how to do that
when he’s on his own.
In a crowded room,
full of old friends
He wonders how
he will survive without friends
But those friends never left
They leaned on him
and he never paid them any mind either
Never got far enough to find out
the color of their soul
Never dove down into their guts
so much it might have kind of hurt them
Never took a magnifying glass
and asked if he could burn our skin
Just for one little moment
Just to see how we respond to pain,
so he would know better how to help
He never peeled away the layer
of fear covering us like a blanket in the winter
He never tried to find our sunburns
and soothe them or check on them
At least to see if they would get pinker
or even start to shed the skin
No, he never cared.
He only wanted to find out if his back
was peeling so he could resolve it asap
He wanted himself to know he was going to be okay
But he was so far from okay we didn’t even see it.
He was so so far.
He still is.
And to think the environment the kids
are going to be in when they are with him
Will he be mean to them?
Will he develop a cadence with them that will burst
Both their body and soul
and they will be free of his trenches?
Probably not.
But it is what it is.
And maybe by being with him,
they can realize how not to be him.
How to be more like their mother,
caring, loving, giving, hoping.
For someone to think that type of person is toxic,
for someone to make that type of person feel toxic,
That’s fucked up.
A waste of a light.
This light will not be wasted.
And if I am, at least I tried to unscrew myself
from the fucking hub I placed myself in.
Can I please just roll over to a new lamp?
Or hell, I’ll even sit in a box for hours
if it means I don’t have to go back to light
the room where the murdering is happening.
Let me skip out on the torture and pain.
Let me rise out of here
like a pile of goo, turned person.
Let me show you all how it’s done.
