Chapter Four

Intro Poem by Emily Burns--Atonement

Chapter four

 

atonement

A Poem by

Emily Burns

my dreams keep asking for expiation

in the curves of lost memory

I saw poetry in your eyes last night

line and verse beckoned

and I was hoping there would be forgiveness

that your voice spelled love again

but this morning there was nothing

and maybe there are no amends

maybe truth means there are no words

to redress secret wrongs

 

Secret wrongs. A rhetorical question at best, in the realm of truth, there may be no amends to transgressions.

He haunted her for many years long after she had given up and married and had children. Sleeping he would come to her. Staring boldly, he would say the words she had longed for so intensely. "I want you." And he would stretch out his hand and the dream would fade a little. Even in her dreams, the passion couldn't last long it seemed.

There were daytime hauntings, too. She would have flashes and fits and bursts of second sight when she was going about her day. She would see him coming to her out of his mind with grief, holding a gun, and she would talk to him, calm him. She knew car wrecks, disappointed unions, spiritual crisis and she would phone a friend. "Check on him, or I will." Once she saw his hand on her pregnant belly, and she knew that he was longing for children of his own.

She carried around a lot of guilt it would seem. He had told a much younger her that she was his last chance--at marriage, and family and happiness. She took it to heart. She was too young to know how many chances there were in a lifetime.

All this and they never spoke a word in seventeen years.

 

 

no amends to transgressions. 

Author's Note

please be patient.