Not-So-Lonely-After-All

A Poem by Theresa

Not-So-Lonely-After-All

“Theresa, Mom and I have to leave…”
I hear my mother’s siren sobs,
behind the gentle, understanding
tones of my fathers voice,
and I feel the air clump around me.
                                            “...Poppop just passed away.”
I try to process and
        trudge
through the horrid,
                                            liquefied nightmare
that circulated through
                                            my thoughts.
Did I see it coming?
                                            No.
Did I see it coming?
                                            Yes.
Does that make it any
less painful?
                                             No.
Sitting in my newly organized
room, the freshness of
the new space should be
freeing.
The absence of
clutter
is refreshing, but the dust
of
life’s tragedies
still weighs me down.
The Black surface of my
drawers-always-left-open-night-table
is actually
                                            visable.
But the feeling is
suffocated by the rush
of
                                            hatred.
The 9/11 terrorists finally
stole
his lungs from him.
                                            Stole
his life.

But it wasn’t theirs
to take.

The thinly carpeted room,
decorated with walls of
gray and red, stabbed with
pictures, paintings, and
promises, is
always
cold.
But the chill now
seeps
deep down into my
bones.
I feel it
                                             crawling
up my spine and
                                            terrorizing
my mind.
My bed becomes a little less
comforting,
thickening and pressuring
me to get up.
The faint
musky-sweet smell
of my sanity
becomes
acid
in my throat.
My eyes swell as
I feel the puddle of tears
from my heart
rip
through the maze of my
body, finally reach my sight,
and then
blur my dry vision.
I let the salty-sweet
droplets
trickle down my
not-so-perfect face, and
free fall into my lonely lap,
onto my blemished bed,
into my mother’s long sleeved,
tie dyed arms.
Phone buzzing, Fan clicking,
crickets chirping, heart pounding,
Mother screaming,
                                            silence.
                                             9:41pm,
was when my day took a turn.
                                              9:41pm, October 6th 2014,
was when my room left me
feeling less at home.
Walls wounded from the
pricks of old drawings,
crinkled and
peeling off like
old wall paper.
Like their lifespan has been
reached. Like they could fall
off any second but they
choose not to.
They choose to hold on
until the
                                             last second
but then…

The silence continues to
creep
in on me, as my
not-so-little
brother sits
with me, in my
not-so-big
room,
as we realize
our Poppop is
                not-so-far,
and
not-so-lonely
in heaven.