Like many other mornings with my mother
I awoke with a nervous stomach
fearful for what this day would bring.
Rarely was the verbal assault, on my ears,
continued past the hour of midnight.
Instead she bore the offensive lance
of being completely incommunicative -
her silence borne like a perpetual greivance
for the childhood wounds I had inflicted.

On this particular morning I recall,
I contemplated ending my life.
(Obviously I never did the dreadful deed
but at each jousting, such as this, yesterday,
the concept of suicide strengthened
became more contemplative.)

At the time I had not a single clue
of what exactly was going on in her head;
how did she feel, how much anger and hate
did she really have, there inside of her?
What I feared as I finally arose from bed
was how she had painted yesterday's event
to my father - long since gone to work.

The days that have accumulated since then
have robbed me of the precise memory
of what it was that created the situation.
Very rarely, in truth, did I have guilt
for my part in these recurring spats.
This one though, and the sickness I felt
throughout the ensuing day, was m-e-m-o-r-a-b-l-e.

Memorable too, in the evening that followed,
was the slap across my face my Father bestowed.
I can still feel how it momentarily
caused my world to shudder and blank

deep, deep, inside my head.
That a child could cause such disturbance
in the ether of our family habitation
is quite an anathema in my memorabilia:
I am sickened in my belly just sitting here
expelling some of the sense of injustice
I felt, through my loved medium of words.

Ah, but time allows the memory's skin
to shed the scabs and scars of wounds!
But though it's skin is soft and smooth
my memory maintains, and the events of that day
cannot be unseen, unfelt, or forgotten.
Such is the uneven path of life we live
that the stones beneath our soles that bite
are the the ones remembered most. The skill,
I have not yet fully learned, is how to absolutely
fill those pains and craters

with everlasting love.

© Griffonner 2022