An Uninvited Guest |
Issue 15
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I sat with your mother’s mother
Abandoned by those who claimed to be Too brittle to keep her company As she died in my arms Cancer wreaked her intestines After a summer As a survival camp counselor for disadvantaged children With the putative sire A powerless hulk in tow You came home pregnant Masked shoals of submerged choices Preclude a call to action “It’s all my fault,” you said You chose to send him home And legally declared yourself Intent and on the way to college As an emancipated minor To be more loan-worthy Asked, can you keep my room intact As if it were a sanctuary Ready as I was to stop Cheating on everyone And divorce your mother Buried in a total disorder or ruined values Untimely for me My refugee parents I suppose Could have tried harder Provided more for me Yet I respected that They did their best To come to terms With what was The Great Depression I loved them They loved me Claimed poverty They chose to deny life to my three aborted siblings Not my place to judge For you my daughter In the shadow Cast by my infidelity Misled by entitlement For you it might be easy To be self-righteous For me it is hard to contain An instinct for vengeance Dismayed not to be consulted Before you and your mother opted for the abortion I put aside though barely in my mind The unremitted notion of Grandparents raising your child Which unconscionably Might resurrect my presumed obligation That of a captain on a sinking ship My self-estranged daughter You have become an uninvited guest At a party to celebrate your birthday You are the center of attention Just what you want Lost souls We stay in touch Long enough To define lifelong roles Responding like A betrayed friend might Without empathy My parents deferred to me As if I were a learned professor Agreed to immediately bequeath their nest egg savings To my children A symbolic gesture of sworn loyalty Upon my promise that I would pledge to maintain them A legacy which you used later To secure a rural property My near fatal accidental distracted precipice plunge Off a fast new racing bike Left me with a fractured vertebra and a halfmoon forehead gash Long-term vertigo Brought you to see me in the trauma center Where you picked dried blood from my hair A loving act which Interrupted my desolation You are the product of whimsical unprotected sex We should have known better A diehard romantic Drawn to memorable daring I was to blame Not your mother I forgave myself Your mother spared me From promulgating a despising family tradition As I recalled No one voiced the thought of Voiding your existence |
MEL EINHORN won 1st Place of the Poetry Writing Contest. Haunted by insistent sensations, intrigued by streams of consciousness, the poet considers estrangement, emancipation, high respect, great esteem.
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