A Dry Sorrow

Bent over back
her soggy fingers soak in
all-purpose-cleaner
– but it isn’t all
purpose.
It can’t clean away the wreckage trapped in her eyes,
or the disbelief scarred upon our faces.
It can’t clean us.
But how my mother cleans
and cleans
and cleans
still.

Roaring in desperate anguish, filling
the atmosphere with what
she can not,
the vacuum sucks up the despair
and heavy air
that has settled into the fibers,
the carpet of sorrows
where we all tread
and wept upon.

A dry sorrow,
slowly creeping throughout my body.
Eagerly waiting to tear fresh grooves into our faces,
the tears linger back as toxins seep
into the unhealed pink flesh of tracks carved from before
– from him.

Floating up these steps once again,
a reoccurring nightmare,
oh please,
be a nightmare.
But the weary slump of familiar hugs
wrench retreating memories,
repressed,
now undressed,
naked,
my grief lays exposed,
vulnerable,
delicate,
twisting through my broken defenses
and winds ‘round and ‘round,
constricting,
pulse weakening,
sadness sinking further
into me.