Family Tree

Single file line

I wonder if he knew them

Cars people lines and verse

Tied to them by blood

Nameless faces all know me

Forced myself to smile

I stand in a group

Making jokes about my age

Death has no humor

Tight room suffocates

With several people watching,

I lean against the wall.

My Father walks in

I tell him I like his tie

He calls sister ‘Bitch’

Grandma forgets year

She asks how her dad died

My Grandfather died

Mom hops between rooms

I try to help her calm down

I am no rabbit

I play middleman

Problems all stem from people

Ice in cups dangle

I held a white rose

Dropped my rose in Grandpa’s grave

Stared at walls of dirt

We sit on plastic

Grandma sits on a cushion

My shoes pierced the ground

The guard has 21 guns

The tent shaded us from sun

Another leaf falls

Snow Globe

The days, the months, the years

it seems have passed me by so quickly.

Now I’m left holding remnants

of a glass figurine I admired once.

If dreams didn’t disappear from reality,

and love never lost a battle,

if hope was all we needed

to have faith and faith

to have what we’ve always needed;

if tears were always of joy

and glass didn’t break on hardwood floors,

if flowers failed to wilt

and wrinkles diminished into nothing,

then age and change

and the bitter sweet endings

would mean nothing more

What shapes the shadows on the wall,

shapes the future that we hold.

The world shrinks in size,

music fades in a jewelry box,

the floors and talk change undetectably.

Paper may burn fast or slow,

but it still will go,

and nothing but ash will remain.

The art of childhood

for a child, is seamless.

The child doesn’t realize

that when she sits in her room,

wishing she could be older,

she’ll sit in a much different house later,

wishing she could be younger.

The light burns on the wick of a candle

and in a wink of an eye, it’s all gone.