on alcohol and cigarettes
with nights too drunk to function. Passed out,
oblivion finds you,
yet peace eludes--
a gray ghost
touching the edge
of your mind. There was
the broken heart,
a childhood sweetheart,
shattering your ideal of love.
There is the career
that is not
what it promised.
There will be
the future stretching hard
and yielding and tough. Time
had already begun
the mold of your downfall
before I had ever
known you. Though I
never truly knew you
for I am coldly unyielding and you
are a closed steel box. Yet
when I first knew you,
I saw a soul peeping out
that shone and fluttered
bright and radiant. I
saw a life of promise
spreading out before you. It
made me reach for you
in a passion
hot and quick with no
attachments, of course, 'cause
those are always bad. That
was all a year ago. Since then
your best friend's death-
the only one who kept you sane-
finished twisting
something joyous into something
dark and mean and cruel,
and the addictions
that teased you
enslaved you. Your soul
has lost the battle. What
I wanted is now
repulsive
for you squander yourself,
shamelessly and hatefully,
with drugs and women and friends,
all of whom you are better than-
until even I,
can not hold to the image of your beauty.
Your dark hole is too much
for what was fleeting between us.
Yet still I try to tell you
why I can no longer offer
what you seek. You
do not understand and call me
bitch and whore and traitor
because I will not join you,
because I will not offer myself
to the demon
you have become.
(c)Lisa Kendrick 2008
published in Skipping Stones, Vol VI
Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA
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