What We See

We see everything and what
we don't see we can smell.
We know you keep that
flask in your purse wherever
you go. We saw you try
to glue your teeth back into
your mouth once. We know
all about the lies, the questions
you never asked though you
promised you would,
the messages-for-us you never
saw fit to transmit, the furtive
actions at meal tables so finely
honed over years that only
family members might know.
Some even might not know.
We see the world evaporating
before our eyes and feel like
polar bears, desperately
balancing on the last little
piece of ice in the ocean,
white flag a-waving, just
hoping some kind soul will
happen along. To help us
to land. To maybe help us
understand where the ice went.
Above all, we're beginning
to see that these decades of
hiding behind our insecurities,
of making excuses due to
the paltry legacies left us,
of becoming nothingness
repeatedly amid a ring
of fire, well, all this time,
and wincing and longing,
has really gotten us no further
outside our skins than the day
we first realized who we were.
We see the bloody and the rosy
both, the peachy and the pathetic,
the keen and the could-have-been
alike. We know you tried. We
know. What we can't figure is:
why didn't you try hard enough?

(2007)