A Place To Breathe Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

The weight of the world made him weak;
and most days, he felt all alone.
The thoughts he thought, he could not speak.
The way was the way of his own.
Tired of the grit beneath his feet,
the calloused hands, and disrespect,
he never thought that he would cheat;
but he was tired of her neglect.

Every day, he worked hard as stone.
A tempest raged inside his head.
Thunder rattled him to the bone
as lightning struck the fountainhead.
Waves washed over honor with shame.
The dark carried him through the night
into arms of a brighter flame
until rise of the morning light.

He found in her a place to breathe,
the quiet grace of shape and form
to escape the sharp city seethe.
She was his shelter from the storm.
Would that the world would fall away
and leave him with her forever,
but the rain comes another day.
He knows that it's now or never.

She had the softest silky skin,
and he found her quite surprising.
She raised him up, then pulled him in,
and he watched the gold sun rising.
It began with a look and smile
across a dim-lit, smoky bar.
She liked his face; he liked her style.
Blues fell into a crystal jar.

He returned to a feathered bed
feeling worse than he did before.
A spouse once, a stranger instead,
he cannot blame her anymore.
Lipstick stains on a collared shirt
bleed into remorse's thorny wreath.
Sticking your nose into the dirt
does not create a place to breathe.