Jenna

Britchet

EYES

If eyes are the windows to the soul, then
Oh! My soul is old!
Set in a face still flushed with youth, my eyes—
once bright and bold—
are reddened with the weight of time, and years of fruitless crying.
If age means death; then in my eyes.
My soul is slowly dying.

In mock beauty, lined in kohl and incandescent shine,
the orgs of gray amongst bruises of plum
hardly seem like mine.
And yet—
there gleams—
beneath the doubt of eyes that saw too much,
a glimmer of the slightest hope,
fed by the Fiery touch
of One who knows what life has done to form this endless hold;
and through the flames,
the burn,
the pain,
revives this weary soul.

Untitled

Waiting, expectant and empty—
Its gaping mouth yearning
for the press of lips, full and soft.
Wrinkled and flaccid, it sits in my hand.
Yearning to be filled.
I take it in my mouth, feeling its rubbery smoothness.
Carressing it with my tongue, my lips compress,
and I blow and blow and blow.
Exhausted, I sit back and survey my handiwork.
I smile to see it full and firm,
A shiny red balloon.

Child of My Heart

She Laughs—
and my world explodes into diamond shards of
tinkling glad filling the air with the
delicate waterfall of shimmering sound waves that
you long to tough as they rise higher, higher—
reaching to heaven and back again,
finally falling ever so delicately to tickle my ears.

With a maniacal look in her giggling eyes,
she runs up and licks me.

Her warm, wet tongue leaves a trail of
delicious saliva trickling down my cheek.
Everything she does is delicious.
Everything she does is divine.
She is my hear, my soul—
the only thing that’s truly mine.

Or is she?

She Twists—
and runs and writhes, a
tumbling mass of bouncing curls and
long brown legs, her
tiny fingers twining through my hair—
pulling and tearing at each strand, and,
as if marionette strings, each tug reaches
down, wrenching at my heart.

I weep with the beautiful agony on it.
Everything she does is beautiful.

She is enchanting—
A princess,
A fairy,
A demon,
A goddess.
Energy screaming from her very being…
Rolling around her…

She seizes life and claims it as hers.

She is off and running again.
“Wait for Mommy!”
It gets harder to catch up to her, so
I hold her a little tighter each time, a little longer.
She still manages to struggle down and run.
She is growing smaller in the distance, yet
her shadow stretches longer.

“Wait for Mommy, baby!”
please wait
She turns and waves, then is gone.
My heart.

THE ACCIDENT

She is calling for me.

My feet begin an involuntary journey
toward her room
of sickness and sorrow,
knowing that she has soiled herself and needs me
to help cleanse her of the filth that spills form her body
unbidden and uncontrollable—
as if pushed by the unseen force of the cancer that is eating
her from the inside.
that has room for nothing but it’s own
black, broiling, pulsing mass of destruction.

I brace myself aginst the stench
that always slaps me in the face.
Irrational,
I refuse to breathe through my mouth,
as if fearing the minute particles of death and decay
that linger in the air may drift
into my open mouth and somehow
infect me with disease.

Instead, I welcome her dark, earthy scent
into my nostrils
in short, burning, bursts of life-giving air—
in and out—
heating the smell.
And loving it…

Hating it,
and maybe her,
for the essence of what it is.
Hating the slippery feel of it as I pick it up
off the floor,
scrub it off the carpet,
wipe it from her wasted flesh.

Loving it—and her—
for being there.
ALIVE.
Able to produce the excrement,
and needing me to clean it up,

Mommy, do you love me?

I steady her as I walk her to the bathroom,
Her frail weight no weight at all.
An old woman hobbling.
who is not yet old.
Who will never be old.

She is quietly sobbing as I return her to bed,
gulping deep breaths of the fetid air
into her failing lungs.
Large, pathetically grateful tears
of shame,
And despair for her lost dignity,
and the bitter unfairness of all,
I pat her hand.
“It’s Alright.”
“Never mind.”
“Please don’t cry.”

I return to the bathroom,
mop the floor,
and flush the toilet—
Weeping for myself,
For her,
For life yet unlived.
My tears splash into the toilet,
Mingling with the piss and the shit and the water,
drifting—

like her—

Away.