on the street of jacarandas
you did yourself in
27 years of silent penance
*
always hoping in the haze of purple
overhead, the blossoms dropping, the drip
rain in the husk’s rebirth
the 100 baby trees each spring
*
until the year the rooms closed down on you forever
until the walls screamed their wreckage back
of years blown by in the breeze.
*
Your teeth grit down hard on the ruin he made of you
or the ruin that you let him make
the house walls recording the error
in their quiet watching
*
there are no words for the selfishness of that
no words for what good you tried to give
& where your teeth grit themselves steely hardest
harder into the bleakness of this terrible error
it’s into that pain you find the doorway
& the whole of the sadness begins to give way
*
like some barren wreck, a wretch
of driftwood pushing itself back out to sea
*
you look back, once
it’s over your shoulder when all the flowers whisper overhead
in a purple flutter, petals pushing out, petals dropping down
petal tears that dried in winterwinds
*
all your goodness that he stripped
it starts to return into vein
that purple running sweet and wet
*
there will be a year the timeclock turns
wreaks revenge on hurtful hours & days
the steel spine rears, a clockwork
*
these are rooms you will leave forever
& nothing will ever be this sad again
and you know it
you know this for yourself
in the non-permitting of an attitude
that you managed to stay alive this Spring
into this particular purpled beginning
*
suddenly there is that door
& in that swinging, a shaft of light, litlamps
burn inside the darkness where there had been nothing
your soul, that low
until it bellowed
~
“under jacarandas” — copyright 2011 — all rights reserved
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 