Gone

Anton Semenov

Neither adieu nor surrogate

Just an absence

Like the breath

Between beatings

Without you

There is no cause

To remain and surely

I will not live to see

Your return if I wait

 

Somewhere behind

The white cross

I attach my wings

Hoping to find

Either retribution

Or resilience

But there is no proxy

That could soften

A mother’s despair

And I the source

At least in theory

 

There’s no deterring

Such thoughts

Once they’ve arisen

They grow voraciously

Between all the gaps

In my architecture

Once they have the heart

They’ll sprout thorns

Heavy as thumb prints

 

I am weak

And everyone

Treats me thus

Which is as infuriating

As the conditions

That beseech them

I do not like my selves

Eager as fireflies

Wanting to abhor

The crutch

The shoulder

The upright palm

But immobile

Without them

 

Loneliness is a sadist

She constructs doors

But keeps the keys hidden

Windows with black glass

And bricks behind them

I have tried to live

Without love

As necessity determined

That I should forever be

In estrangement

With relatives flickering

In the dark like specters

Never close enough

To exorcise or claim

*

I know I have told this story before but some of my reader’s might be new

When I was a child around 3 my mother left me with my Schizophrenic/alcoholic/abusive father. I do not know how long she was away only that she left the state. I managed to phone my grandmother (she lived somewhere behind the white cross aka a church). When my grandmother arrived she found me locked outside with no clothes on. I had tried to walk to her house but when I got to the church I didn’t know which way to go. Being both naked and alone I was afraid of someone catching me though I did have to cross a busy highway no one stopped.

 

 

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