There is a lonely room at the back of the house,
an empty chair at breakfast,
a path that lays dormant, never walked because he never got the chance.
Time stopped when he left,
I know you didn’t feel it, but I did.
There was a part of me,
torn from my soul,
separated,
tormented by rope,
taken,
because somebody made a “mistake”,
put in place by a longing for revenge,
a lack of empathy…
“Oh sweetheart,
don’t you see that SOMEONE had to swing,
to keep the world turning?”
I hear that,
from lips that don’t even think I deserve an explanation,
so they don’t speak,
but I see it,
I hear it,
I feel it,
in everything you do.
I see it in the way you look away when my mother cries.
I hear it in the way you are silent when the time for a reprieve comes.
I feel it, when nine o’clock comes, and I am at sea, sinking in the tears of the many nine o’clocks, and all their misery.