The stew over the stove burns

And a voice from the lounge materializes

‘What kind of lady are you?’

A voice promised to hush my fears

But what now hushes all of me

The whishing grows louder

And sweat rolls down my temples

I can hear the couch creaking

Under the weight of that voice

And so I beseech it not to crush me

I scrub the sink, scrub, scrub

The oven dings and a smell pervades

The air, the tang of cheap barbecue sauce

Mixes with the smell of his cigarette butts

Buried deep into the couch where they shall go unnoticed withal

It’s nine o clock now and

I put my boy to bed before

The nonexistent grease on the sink calls to me

Because despite all, the scrubbing never was enough

His walk is so reckless now

Raging storms of discarded words wherever he goes

Feckless demands to a ‘feckless wife’ as he calls me

As he strikes a blow and maybe two more

It wasn’t all blows and beatings before

It was just fate’s way

When luminous dreams fall into dark alleys

And become a living nighmare

I suppose it wasn’t his fault

That his scrubbing too called him out

That someone with a bird caught

The worm he desired to feast on in the distance

But was it not his fault

The scars on his heart he

Imprinted on my skin because their

scabbing was from my undoing, my wounds

is he not guilty

of the son we both bore first with

promises of love and tidings of felicity

now left in the shambles of a broken home

this game is vicious and though

I am not his altruistic bride

I scrub away every day in vain

Hopes of scrubbing away his plight

I suppose our love has now eviscerated

With glassfuls of cheap liquor on his part

And I rebate my senseless, obstinate heart

Why I never overturned the tables full of cigarette butts and broken glass onto his degutted detrimental heart

Why, I reproach, I never acted

Outside the whispers of assurances to our little boy

In his bedroom when he awoke at midnight

To the slurring voice and crashing noise of the person we were both supposed to love

Why never I threw the scrub and emptied the liters of

Barbecue sauce onto the embers of our dying fire

And raged a fire so much stronger

Than his poisonous diction of nightly tantrums

I wish I could push back the memories

Of a tenderness alike falling leaves on in October

Wish I could reiterate myself to the

Prickly bites of pines crunching beneath shoeless feet in December

Tonight I lay in my child’s bed

That he had once painted stars on himself

He whispered to our boy how he’d

Catch them for him and that nothing he dreamed could be too far off

No, that was false because tonight

I know that sometimes dreams are too flimsy, too wayward

That stars are selfish balls of gases thousands of light years away

and that fishing for them would waste away all good left in the world

No but I also know that tonight

When he returns to our pastiche of wasted promises

And hastily made reassurances to hearts long despaired

That the stars will descend to our windows for a while

They will descend and obliviate our minds with

Melodies that flow out of their ephemeral dust

To maybe, just maybe, tame the darkness in the room

And furnish our dying hope with a fire

I know he will call my name tonight

Shaped from the lips who once caressed my name

And now spits it with a repulsion that

Curdles any hope for those soft lips to ever return

And you will find me once again

In the greased sink by the stove

Scrubbing away what never relieves

Scrubbing away what always regrows

Night after night.The stew over the stove burns

And a voice from the lounge materializes

‘What kind of lady are you?’

A voice promised to hush my fears

But what now hushes all of me

The whishing grows louder

And sweat rolls down my temples

I can hear the couch creaking

Under the weight of that voice

And so I beseech it not to crush me

I scrub the sink, scrub, scrub

The oven dings and a smell pervades

The air, the tang of cheap barbecue sauce

Mixes with the smell of his cigarette butts

Buried deep into the couch where they shall go unnoticed withal

It’s nine o clock now and

I put my boy to bed before

The nonexistent grease on the sink calls to me

Because despite all, the scrubbing never was enough

His walk is so reckless now

Raging storms of discarded words wherever he goes

Feckless demands to a ‘feckless wife’ as he calls me

As he strikes a blow and maybe two more

It wasn’t all blows and beatings before

It was just fate’s way

When luminous dreams fall into dark alleys

And become a living nighmare

I suppose it wasn’t his fault

That his scrubbing too called him out

That someone with a bird caught

The worm he desired to feast on in the distance

But was it not his fault

The scars on his heart he

Imprinted on my skin because their

scabbing was from my undoing, my wounds

is he not guilty

of the son we both bore first with

promises of love and tidings of felicity

now left in the shambles of a broken home

this game is vicious and though

I am not his altruistic bride

I scrub away every day in vain

Hopes of scrubbing away his plight

I suppose our love has now eviscerated

With glassfuls of cheap liquor on his part

And I rebate my senseless, obstinate heart

Why I never overturned the tables full of cigarette butts and broken glass onto his degutted detrimental heart

Why, I reproach, I never acted

Outside the whispers of assurances to our little boy

In his bedroom when he awoke at midnight

To the slurring voice and crashing noise of the person we were both supposed to love

Why never I threw the scrub and emptied the liters of

Barbecue sauce onto the embers of our dying fire

And raged a fire so much stronger

Than his poisonous diction of nightly tantrums

I wish I could push back the memories

Of a tenderness alike falling leaves on in October

Wish I could reiterate myself to the

Prickly bites of pines crunching beneath shoeless feet in December

Tonight I lay in my child’s bed

That he had once painted stars on himself

He whispered to our boy how he’d

Catch them for him and that nothing he dreamed could be too far off

No, that was false because tonight

I know that sometimes dreams are too flimsy, too wayward

That stars are selfish balls of gases thousands of light years away

and that fishing for them would waste away all good left in the world

No but I also know that tonight

When he returns to our pastiche of wasted promises

And hastily made reassurances to hearts long despaired

That the stars will descend to our windows for a while

They will descend and obliviate our minds with

Melodies that flow out of their ephemeral dust

To maybe, just maybe, tame the darkness in the room

And furnish our dying hope with a fire

I know he will call my name tonight

Shaped from the lips who once caressed my name

And now spits it with a repulsion that

Curdles any hope for those soft lips to ever return

And you will find me once again

In the greased sink by the stove

Scrubbing away what never relieves

Scrubbing away what always regrows

Night after night.