If you say “good morning,” he will look up

from his weeding, or whatever he is doing in

the fenced area of his front yard, look at you

as if he just caught you mid-squat in the dirt,

and turn his wrinkled nose away. If you knock

on his door to talk about his rusted Accord

blocking your driveway, you see his scowling

face in the window—his greeting, a middle finger.

He’s been known to throw things. The family next

door know not to say anything as they pass by

on the sidewalk; he will snarl at them, and nod

to Mr. Torkington, their pet Doberman.

His house smells like musty papers and

dog food. Scout troops are warned from

approaching his door, a girl fractured her

leg when he had chased her away from

his stoop with a rolled up newspaper.

Animal control makes annual inspections

of his house. One time a concerned neighbor,

startled by all the rabbits, called for a wellness

check. They came and took hundreds of

floppy-eared, snuffling rabbits away in crates,

while he hovered by the front door and sobbed.

Spring finds him kneeling in the fresh dirt of his yard

tilling the soil with a trowel, he spies a baby robin

gray and ugly, crying in loud braying cheeps

—sounds too loud for such a tiny body—he

uses the trowel to expose pink fleshy worms

in the muck and the baby bird hops closer,

dodging nimbly between each shower of dirt. 

“You deserve better,” he says, clucking his tongue,

and scans the sky for more friends. 

A shrouded heart

Wallowing in discontent.

Masked by whiskey burn

And questionable hits.

Shaking heads mutter,

"You deserve better

Than this fabricated bliss."

And I'll toast to that,

Bringing the glass to my lips.

A mother sings a lullaby

Night is nigh

The Child sleeps

Full of peace....

Knowing that angels

Keep watch through

Each passing hour.

A mother whispers

Into her little one's ear

You deserve better Dear

Reach for the stars....

Even aim for the moon

Follow the beat of your heart

There's no greater tune.

You deserve better

     I wield my pen

     polish your beauty

     mirror your soul

     coddle it on paper

You deserve better

     I inscribe your scars

     with angel’s breath

     wrap you in loving words

     meant to embrace

You deserve better

     I understand your pain

     bedeck in gauzy words

     draw the butterscotch moon

     to radiate on your face

You deserve better

     My words breathe for you

     to give you respite

     erasing the smudges

     that tarnish your life

You deserve better

     I autograph a tranquil mind

     expose you to a gossamer life

     draw the inner art of you

     let you find your sacred place.

Life is so unfair

I will not lie to you

People get broken 

People get used

From love lost

Hearts shatter

It feels like

Nothing else matters

The world has been

So unfair to you

Leaving you down

All sad and blue

Now you've given up

You let yourself get hurt

But I care

For what it's worth

Hun, 

I have to say

You deserve better

Both yesterday and today

Don't let them 

Bring you down

Put on a smile

Lose that frown

Hello rosebush,

Poor neglected gift...

Do you need more sun

Or less?

You deserve better.

There's a place to hang a hammock

on the hill above your house.

Here we are free

and know each other to be beautiful.

It pains me to see you grow

up up and away

to see you suck in your stomach

and sit up straight under their gaze

- the boys' -

because you love it when they look at you.

And that's okay.

But don't let their eyes give you your value.

You're worth so much more.

Like when you sillywalk down the hillside

or sing loudly out of tune or when your face twists 

because your mouth isn't wide enough 

to let all your laughter out.

I come second to you, but I don't mind.  

I've always sought out lights brighter than mine

in the hopes of illuminating something larger that I.

And so that I can hide.

But I can see where you broke,

where your spine snapped

from twisting back to please others

and the holes they left

and how you're insecure about the way

the tops of your thighs rub together.

Or the way you tiptoe around your mother.

There's a place to hang a hammock

on the hill above your house.

It's quiet here

and I hope you can see

you deserve so much better

than what they're giving you.

"Will you write something for me

where something nice happens?" the boy asks me.

"Something nice?"

He nods. "Everything you write is so serious."

He is ten years old, the son of a dear friend

who is a terrible parent. He comes to my house

very often, has for years, and does his

homework or reads books while I sit writing.

Sometimes I read to him what I have written, 

sometimes he reads it on his own.

He's asked me what a clit was, because he read it

in something I wrote, what a speedball is.

We are unlikely friends, a grown man and

a precocious boy; if we go out - I often

take him with me when I don't feel like 

cooking - we are always taken for 

father and son. We favor each other, 

as the ladies used to say. 

His father is one of two people

who has literally saved my life, 

but is now on his own downward

trajectory, he is a human Skylab.

I see the boy very often lately.

"Serious?"

"It's always drugs or weird girl problems."

He is not wrong.

"Something nice then?"

And he nods his golden-brown head.

At the very least, this child 

should have that.

You deserve better, I almost say,

but it would be a betrayal of our

unspoken agreement never to mention

why he comes here, why we are friends,

why I am even alive.

He comes and looks over my shoulder

at the poem I am about to delete.

" 'Country and Western'?" he asks.

"It's only a title," I say, my finger hovering.

"Is it about music?" I shake my head.

He says again, "Write something nice for me,"

and trundles off to the bathroom.

A boy and a girl sit on the edge of a dock, dangling their feet into the warm waters of

a Minnesota lake, watching the summer sun disappear behind tall pine trees. They have only known each other for a few hours, and already the boy's arm is curlicues and swirls and whorls, painted in henna by the steady hand of the girl. His chest, his back are decorated too, and as she had painted him, she had told him the designs she was making, what they meant and symbolized.

And why those, he asked, pointing to a slithering vine-like line going up his side, and the girl smiled and tucked her tongue in the corner of her mouth to paint the leaves just so, and finally said, A vine is strong and tenacious.

And this? he asked, pointing to the cattail going up the underside of his left arm. A reed is supple and bends when it is wise to bend.

She tucks her blond hair behind her ear and tells him to lower himself into the water. He does, and when he comes out the henna is like filigree etched into his skin. He is breathless at the loveliness she has made upon him, and he looks at her, in wonder, 

and says 

The boy is back from wherever he has been

and is reading over my shoulder again.

I can feel beside me his warmth and smell

a scent of peanut butter. "What does the boy 

say", he asks, looking up at me,

his eyes clear and unveiled, as if seeing 

at last through a dense and frightening

fog. "He says, 'I don't deserve this'."

And I put my arm around the boy 

I have no right to deserve

and he says, "Finally."

My dad and I had been sitting in the same spot for the past hour. Him sitting forward on the couch, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Me, spread out on the arm chair, staring up at the ceiling.

At the beginning of the night my mother had been here sitting down with us at the dinner table, laughing and talking excitedly. Then she left, seeking some better adventure, trying to find some more excitement for her life.

Again.

I don’t know how he puts up with it, I’m her daughter and I can barely stand it. He married her, and just… why would he do that?

Out of the corner of my eye, I see his head raise from his hands, and I assume he’s looking at me, “She’ll be back.”

I stop staring at the ceiling to meet his gaze, “How do you know?”

“She always comes back.”

I cough and look away from him, unwilling to look him straight in the eyes anymore to see what he was thinking. My dad is very easy to read, once you stare into his eyes long enough. After another moment of silence I ask him, “You do know that you deserve better, right?”

He chuckles and says, “Trust me, I don’t.” And with that, he gets up and walks away while I sit here trying to figure out what he means. Trying to figure out why she always leaves and comes back. Just trying to make sense of this strange relationship between my parents that for whatever reason, they’re both okay with.

Who knows, maybe it will make sense to me one day.

Actually, scratch that, I hope this never makes sense to me.

You deserve better than this, Tabby…

This thought kept echoing around in circles through Tabitha’s brain. She wasn’t sure how she was going to face her new reality, sentenced to a life of miserable luxury. She was only 21, and hadn’t experienced even a tenth of the things she had planned on.

She had dreams of exploration and beauty; now Amy, her best friend since kindergarten, was going to be taking their long-awaited backpacking tour of the U.S. without her. They had always planned on being together forever, best friends to the end.

That was before her father’s “arrangement” with the man he owed all that money to.

Her new husband was extremely wealthy, and he wasn’t horrid to look at. At first she was flattered--and then even a little excited--by the mystery that being a wife would be. She had moved to a beautiful new apartment, and was able to wear beautiful clothes … and she now hated every moment she spent there.

It was a velvet prison, and the man next to her was her warden now. This little trip to Switzerland, for example, was for him; she wouldn’t even be allowed to go shopping without an escort.

Lost in these dark thoughts, Tabby stared out the window at the clouds that covered the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of feet below. There was no way for her to know that her new husband, and this ‘wonderful’ new life, had only 480 seconds left, or that she would be spending the next seven weeks in a battle just to survive. No way to know, that was, until the sound from the planes engine stopped, and the nose took a sudden lurch downward…

(c) 2017 - dustygrein