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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Just Keep Going

That first night
after I moved out,
minutes dripped
faucet-like,
agonizing and slow,
and I kept thinking
“she’ll call,
any minute now.”

By the 11 o’clock news
I was resigned,
eyes red and puffy
and I play-acted
normalcy,
pretending to sleep,
realizing this new
world would take time
to become mine.

The brief, pathetic life 
we’d made 
you traded away 
for the White guy
who made more money 
than me,
and his promise 
of a fantasy life 
and left me prey 
to another woman,
who wore evil intent
like her body splash.

She was also 
looking for someone 
to fulfil her fantasy life
and she thought she’d found it
in me,
but I was just 
numbing myself
with her attention
and her pale, freckled bosom.

That ended badly as well,
but she wasn’t going to be 
a victim,
and she accused me 
of rape.

That was 1994,
and again,
time did its 
predictable thing:
it just kept going.

One day to the next
like the waves on the sand
ever repeating,
ever repairing
ever after.

Time 
just kept going, 
no respecter 
of people,
nor pressure,
nor pain,

and there I learned
the lesson and the secret 
to making it through
that hellish year:

just like time,
just keep going. 

[Posted for https://dversepoets.com/ - prompt: from a place of pain.]

8 comments:

  1. Sometimes all you can do is one day at a time.

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  2. This sounds like it was a really tough time for you, and sometimes the only way through grief and pain is just to carry on. You say this so well:

    like the waves on the sand
    ever repeating,
    ever repairing
    ever after.

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  3. "time did its
    predictable thing:
    it just kept going."

    Poignant lines.

    Nice poem. Bravo

    Much💜love

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, "just keep going" is the only way to go through such times.
    pax,
    dora

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  6. Sometimes all we can do is keep going.

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  7. Oh... to be selected for someone else, such pain... and also so many ways we can inflict pain... I love how you started it as water-torture in the first stanza.

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