Memories Unspoken
A dozen roses
A wooden box
Rave beads
And cigarettes.
The warmth of my breath
Breaks the sharp cold
Of the November air
And curls like the soul, onward.
I lay a single rose on your casket, my brother.
And stand silently among
The symphony of tears —
A chorus of the fallen.
A shattered soul amongst those
Who have shattered ours.
Blood on their hands
And within their hearts; beating thus forth alive.
I wonder how they still call themselves
Your family,
Dismissed you for an addict, a criminal,
And called it a day.
One can only hope
That they feel this ache in their bones
Eternally.
Until they are consumed by the burning.
Joe, forgive us.
Forgive them,
How they have sinned
So deeply.
Retrograde
When the abuser
becomes the victim,
does the storyline shift?
When he
unravels
past memories
of
broken
glass
bruised
chests
raised
voices
The only
love language
ever
known.
Does the abuser
deserve sympathy?
Is this understanding,
this feeling —
what it means to be alive?
Or is it merely
the product of his
own destruction?
The throb of an old wound.
The power of his raised fists.
A lightbulb that will never flicker,
Until it ceases into the unknown.
Clare M. Nee is a recent graduate from Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y, where she majored in English, and minored in Psychology. Clare is a current English M.A Graduate Student at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. She has never had my poetry published before. It took her many years to finally have the courage to submit my creative work elsewhere, however, she has published research within my field during my time at Siena College.
Clare’s research essay, ‘The Calamity of Social Ignorance’ was published in Siena College’s First Year Seminar Journal: Gleanings in Fall of 2017, and ‘The Haunt of Injustice: Exploring Homophobia in Vampire Literature’ was published in the Digital Literature Review Spring of 2020. She was also selected to present her research capstone ‘The Sensationalism of Trauma in American Film and Literature’ in Spring 2020 at the National Conference of Undergraduate Literature, and her article ‘The Cataclysmic Desire for Power: The Irish Rebellion of 1641’ was recently accepted for publication in the Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History for Fall 2020.
