Love Deep Down in Her Bones

She leans over him

so close she can

still smell her milk

on his breath.

Inhaling deeply, she parts

the shroud of silence

that separates them

Is love an emotion

   or a choice?

She hears her mother’s voice in her mind,

the words cracking her bones

letting her know the aching heartbreak is real.

He’ll grow up one day and leave you

   alone.

Doesn’t seem to matter that her mother

has been dead all the years

since she has been born, died in childbirth.

She struggles to stand

slides to the floor & the blade

glints in her hand,

the truth of what she has come for

slices through the night.

But the loneliness suffocates

She is tired of singing the blues

as if though it were her birthright

When she hears the key slide

in the front door, she knows it must be done

quickly. That love is a choice.

and she must make it.

The knife almost glides across

the curve of his neck. She expects to

have to stifle his screams as the blood seeps

into the pillow lying beneath his head

But one deep exhale is all that comes.

Then the sound of her lover’s voice

“I’m home.”

She smiles to herself knowing

he will be proud of her for what

she has done and that he will

finally allow her to know love.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind