"Game on"

There are just some things
 that once seen
can't be "un-seen",
once knowing a thing
one can not "un-know" and
once heard
can not be "un-heard":

She sits in a trailer in a trailer park in Houston
surrounded by plastic pink flamingos.
Hurricane Ike just made his exit
stage left, leaving devastation in his path.
 It is still dark outside but It's way past
the witching hour,
the trailer has a pull out cot and a kitchenette
booth for eating. This is where she has her computer
set up gratis internet for the temporaily un-homed.

 Her sister is asleep on the pull out while
she is on the computer playing video games.
 She is beyond the point of exhaustion but
unable to sleep, the battle ground rages
into her earphones.

 Her sister gets up and walks past her and
enters the tiny portal to the right
where they shower and relieve themselves.

Several minutes pass and there is no
movement from the restroom. She calls out
to her sister and asks if "all is ok in there?"
but the sister doesn't answer, a few more minutes
the battle ground ends,
and she asks again "hey, did you fall in?"
this time a little louder, concerned.

The sister who is still on the pull out
behind her wakes irritably and says "what!?"

She spins on the booth seat to see her sisters
bundled shape still on the pull out that is now
turning and tugging at the sheet she mutters

"Jesus" she says..."can't you be quiet? I have to work early!"

The girl at the booth stares in shock at her sister, turns
round wide eyed and stares at the portal door...

swallows thickly and when her mind will not process
what has just happened, goes back to her game. 

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

Shrewd as I am, and as neurotic people often are about the anxieties of others, I sense in this poem just how objectified the subjects in our poems are. Or, we identify thru metaphor, what brings our hair-trigger inquiries to the door. My mother still calls me, at least, 6 times a day and you cant tell me she isn't doing this to see if i'm still alive. I've been to Houston and the breeze, when there was one, just wasn't right. It was too hot there, not the hottest place I've ever been, but close. But I digress.

Most of us carry in our heart the Jocasta who begs Oedipus for Gods' sake not to inquire further". It's what living in 2020 has made us into perhaps. We want to call and cry out; we want to pull the covers over our heads and be left alone. ..dana

[Corset]

No one wants to believe that maybe there are other things beside carbon beings roaming the mind won't wrap around the concept of the people lurking who have been departed or maybe just on another level of reality/dimension maybe that you can't always see, but once you see something like this you can't unsee it