Lonesome

She takes her child to the play ground

leans on the rusty broken gate

the lonesome mother

watches happy families – complete

she is different, she is cheated, she is

counting the years;  the incessant footsteps leading

to struggle in a long and winding road - drowning

she forces a smile and waves back at her little one.

She feels her youth seeping through her fingers

falling with every dead strand of hair.  

Glove

She's had so many in the past, but she loves this one.

The one she found by coincidence

The one she found when she was looking for something entirely different

The unassuming one that fits

The one she almost lost; the one that always finds its way back

Resilient strong leather; genuine caring skin

She loves how it retains the shape of her hand when she's had enough

Faithfully etching an impression of her every skin crease; waiting for her to come back

In the dark

He comes to see her late at night

In the dark, his finger intense

His eyes carefully touch her everywhere

He sniffs her like a hungry dog

tells her beautiful words;

how delicious she smells

She feels

 his breath         

                   consuming her       

                                after every cigarette

When he

When he tells her he is going away

Her tangled old fears unravel, her sneering old doubts growl

This is when he goes - the voice whispers - this is when it all grows cold

She never did learn how to grab hold of her tether or rein her seething promiscuous self

She wants the words but her weaknesses are strong

No articulation, no eloquence, no fluency

just her crooked forced smile when she tells him she'll drive him to the air-port. 

That

That love often wore its haunting masks

That the voices were deceiving

That her hungers grew weary and her passions destructive

That when she thought she finally climbed out of her sadness; she found she was 

always at the very bottom of its empty glass

That her mending of a broken jug, her replacing of a button, her sweeping under the fridge; is but her desperate compensation for all which she cannot mend, all which she 
cannot sew together, all which she cannot clean.