“You are the King, and I am your Star”
It was etched, carved, and bled there
by you and my uncle.
A lost language scribbled
upon your trauma Rosetta Stone.
Years after you’d moved off
the street, shack, slum
and into this real home,
devoid of rats, rags,
and abusive fathers.
It was on a beam in the basement,
behind an old TV box,
with dead earwigs in its folds.
The house once had a garden
from your mother, my grandmother.
And those bugs, the clawed ink-drops
were living everywhere
their husks, fossil-songs
to her stalks of cherry tomatoes.
The wood was creased, parted,
and curled, as if the vignette had just happened.
You were still the two little boys
marking it yours, with the sunlight
tracing through a ground-level window,
growing life in a non-chlorophyll pattern
from 94 million miles away
a natural spotlight on hope between past and future.
We found it when I was moving out.
Another bout of depression, failed
relationship, and unpaid rent
for your childhood home
you bought when grandma died.
It was a piece of you; something you wanted
for memory, family, a forever symbol of safety.
A limb of hope after
so many emotional dismemberments.
I could not hold onto it,
It was slippery, slimy, a dream that didn’t want
to be held, an eel lurking in the quagmire,
eternally wriggling away
beneath the subtlest grasp.
Your sanctuary was another rubble-sunk Atlantis,
so now, years after it was sold and lost
your first glimmer amongst the poverty
I can at least remember what it said.
#blogging #books #creativeWriting #emotionalWriting #literature #originalWriting #patrickWMarsh #poem #poemOfTheDay #poems #poet #poetsOnWordpress #spokenWord #writing