Tag Archives: tragedy

The Great Upending

When it breathes
upon your window
and smiles

When it strolls in
through the unlocked
patio door
between the curtains
like a breeze
like breath

When it comes
walking barefoot
towards your bedroom

When it crawls
between the sheets
and settles in

When it takes
your hand
like the hand of a child

and it whispers
in your ear

What do you know
about anything
at all now?

The moment
it becomes
a living thing
breathing all over you

Your soul
suddenly
a piece of glass
falling
into a great black sea

Unexpected
it arrives
as a storm
at your window
a hound
at your door
a stranger
in your bed

The moment
that everything
changes

that you never saw
coming

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“Don’t Worry, Albert.”

Took care of my wife
for ten years
as cancer slowly
took her away
from me.

“Don’t worry, Albert.
It always rains
on a sunny day,
doesn’t it?”

She’d always say.

Two years alone
after she passed
I moved far away
to start again.

It was either that
or put a gun
to my head.

But everywhere I looked
I still saw
a reminder of her
in every woman
in every child.

I worked
then I wandered the streets.
Trying to live.
Trying to cry.
Trying to die.

And one day
I saw her
leaving a laundromat,
laughing.

It was her
but it wasn’t
because it
couldn’t be

but there she was.

I walked up to her
and stared
like an idiot.

Asked if I could
walk with her.

She looked at me
strange.
I didn’t blame her
but she acquiesced.

That was when
on a blue sky
it opened up
with rain singing across
all the streets
in the sunlight.

She laughed and she
looked at me with that
gorgeous smile
that always
broke through me
like I was air
then she took my hand.

“Don’t worry, Albert.”
she said.

“It always rains
on a sunny day
doesn’t it?”