He needs a day to love you,
to bring you flowers that glow
the same red as the blood he
forces out from under your skin,
on those other days, when love
is farther from his mind than sanity.
When his only idea of a caress is
something that hurts, that explosion
of pain in your beaten face, those
raccoon eyes that make you such
a beautiful, pitiful thing to behold.

Now that face belongs to me,
has never known black eyes, but
blood enough to drown in, and longing
for the kind of love that crushes and
breaks, the kind that makes its own
days, claws them into existence.
He says the words and I regurgitate
them, to taunt him, to dare him to
bring his fists to bear upon this face
that will never forget that it was yours.

02/13/2004

Author's Note: About my mother, and, in turn, me.

Posted on 02/14/2004
Copyright © 2024 Aaron Blair