Torn Poem by Thoughts of a Single Man

The room is dark now
except for the tattered strips of moonlight
that slide through the pane of the dirty window.
She sits quietly in the shadows of her own remorse
with cheap dime store pen in her trembling hand.
Her thoughts run hard,
like a Thoroughbred reaching for the finish line,
yet her body is stoically still.
Her life flashes before her eyes
like clips of a cinema that unwinds in the reel of her mind.
She used to be so pretty and she used to be so fine,
She use to be proud of her creativity and her imaginative mind,
she used to think the world was so kind.
She used to believe in the salvation of time.
She used to believe a lot of things,
even that a bird in the prison of its own existence
could still find the notes to sing its chirping song of glee.
That was a lifetime ago
when she recalled what it was to be free.
Now each day grinds before her so slowly
like a train crawling into its final destination.
Her baby is asleep in the next room,
her belly full as she dreams of better days.
Her man,
her so called man,
is asleep on the couch in front of her.
He is no man.
This is her prison guard,
her captor,
the warden of her hopes,
the one who just a few short hours ago choked her
until she almost lost consciousness…. again.
She opens the book on her lap to an empty page
as her hand begins to move once more.

“Dear diary,

he almost killed me again today. I don’t now why I stay but I have no where else to go and my baby needs a roof over her head. I have saved up a little money he does not know about and soon, very soon my diary, I will have enough for us to leave but for now he pays the bills and keep us here in this home. This home made cell. I can’t stand the way he smells. The liquor seeps through his pours like wounded sores that emit the scent of his ignorance.There was a time he said he loved me. In fact he used to tell me every day. That was before the first slap over the short length of these three long years. He has beaten all the love out of me but when he holds our daughter and I can still see the faintest glimmer of the man I once knew, when our future was bright and our lives were so new. That my sweet dear diary was before I needed you. If I can just hold on a little longer, be a little stronger and survive, perhaps my daughter and I can escape from this place, this institution of pain, and I can take back my own name. But each day gets worse like the legacy of a gypsy curse, and each day, sad to say, is the same. Sometimes there is not enough time between blows for the bruises to fully heal but our daughter is never touched and he loves her so much. Who was the trusting fool that said nightmares are not real. Lord give me the strength to go on and tell me why the caged bird sings. Teach me the words to her song. Until tomorrow come what may, hope to see you again dear diary, if I can just make it through another day.”

She closes the small book
and holds it tight in her tiny hand
and takes one last look at the demon of her sleeping man.
Her mind begins to race once more,
mentally sketching the diagram of an escape plan,
and time slips by.
She has forgotten how to feel,
she has forgotten how to cry,
as each day is another entry in the story of her weeping soul.
She tears out the freshly written page
and walks calmly to the dirty window
and eases it under the open pane.
It sits there for a moment teetering on the ledge
until it blows away on the dying air of her remorse
as she places the small book with the blank pages
back onto the table beside her.
She returns and sits back in the chair once again,
there in the midst of her screaming silence,
and closes her tired and swollen eyes
in the middle of a darkened room.


Thoughts of a Single Man © 2014 tm