No Returns

If my mom is losing weight,
You better know that I am too.
I’m writing broken poems,
Painting with muted tones.
I’m praying unsarcastically,
I’m sipping her black coffee free
Of creamer.

I’m so far out, it’s not even laughable,
So far from who I used to be.
They say ‘new normal’, but
Who am I even meant to be?
A million yards from who I knew,
One month ago, three, a year, or two.

Reborn in death.
Her end is only a beginning for someone new.
The trees are blooming,
I am wallowing in decay.
I’m not even on this planet.

Days are all connected, there is no stop or sleep or start.
What I know now, a continuation, a constant flow,
Annualization.

I can feel, I think, I know:
There was something before this,
And when we go,
There’s more.
I’m surer than sure.

We are all winter-girls these days.
Life hurts like lemon in a paper cut,
Like acid in my nose,
Mustard gas and gasoline,
Matches, lighters, embers seen,
Through eyes too clouded to be hers,
Through feelings felt, cakes un-devoured.

Surrounded, together, and sweetly apart.
I’m falling, she’s falling,
I’m sipping un relentlessly from the fountain of youth,
But she’s quenching her thirst with poisoned apple juice.

An iceberg comes, she jumps right in,
I stand, the band, beautiful and terrible,
I wish I saw the fin.

The shark, greedy.
And me, needy.
I need her.
Wish I could go too,
where she will dwell,
I will dwell,
What she can’t yell,
I will yell,
Her smell, baby lotion,
A woman’s head, but the scent is a new baby instead.

What she cannot get back.
What is loyalty if not this?
I’ll wander alone through agony and bliss-
left untouched- uninterested.

How can anyone care about tomorrow,
if I’ve been trapped in ‘now’,
Like an obese mosquito
For three months?

Scratch it and it pops, like the life you thought you had,
The potential you counted on,
When meandering through dark corners,
Of your disposed hopes and wishes.

Dream away and open your eyes:
That darkness is my reality.
Longing and lingering,
Messiah or mescaline,
Malignant meringue,
Snacks are evil, don’t do a thing.

Many dance in pain, serving one another from a platter
Of ‘one day’ and ‘what if’ and
‘we’re praying for you’,
What the cuss did it matter?

Well,
There are no returns here,
God gave me one option,
I’ve watched it almost entirely through.
It’s not stopping.