Table Talk

We were sitting around the dining room
and you were talking about
your new job at school
and all the children that ran
wound around your ankles like cats.
How your favourite sound
was a child’s laughter -
as they rolled helter-skelter
care free across the ground.

We were sitting around the dinner table
and you still talked about
your new job at school,
but today it was not laughter.
It was about the two boys
you caught kissing behind the ladder
during recess.
And I will never forget
the design on your leather jacket
or the curls of your blonde hair
or the way your blood-painted lips moved
when you said,
“He was such a cute boy,
too bad he has such an illness.”

And I will never forget my anger
the fiery cherry blossom of rage
that bloomed to an inferno of life
within my chest.
Or the way the silence descended
around the room as incandescent
as the shroud that silence allowed
ignorance to shrug from my open eyes.

And as I stood, your words
“Well, what else would you call it?”
rang in my ears
the way a hammer rings
off an anvil
the way that boy’s frustration and sadness
must boil out of his lungs
and the edges of his eyes
because WE DON’T UNDERSTAND.

For a moment I almost hoped he died
to teach you each life is precious
but the next moment I knew
that was not true
the only one I wanted to die,
was you.