Tag: leaving home

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She’s Leaving Home

Not the right lyrics but the refrain is the same. We live like clichés: daughter leaving for college, we weep, we anguish, and we sever ourselves from ourselves to get past the pain. We cheer ourselves with thoughts of new beginnings and circle of life and metamorphoses, butterflies growing beautiful, upward flight past us.

It feels trite and real at the same time. Our lives have been captured in too many Hallmark poem-lets for sale.

I have anticipated this moment in my dreams (nightmares) since she was born, different shapes and scenery, but all the same theme: leaving.

She’s leaving home. Off to college, which will be her new temporary home in a new state. Whether the leaving is temporary or permanent is yet unknown.

In the meantime, I will be shoring up for the next one’s departure, estimated time of departure, two years or twenty.

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The Leak

  

  

Burst pipes in the ceiling, flood on the floor
running water, feet paddling wooden slats
tread the milling seeds of parodic shrugs
shouldered under duress, swamped under.
 
Not my burden, not my share to offer any.
Only advice I can give is phone a plumber
fix the foundational leaks pouring in on us
seeped slyly wet sopping our shirted skin.
 
Make a claim, seek help, buy a plan, a key;
we’ve been sunk up to our necks before.
Open your mind; see the broken thoughts
splintering the walls as the fragments fall.
 
We both knew the roots would unearth us
bring a house down to the water’s surface
strangle the strangers within in knotty lies 
and so we sink as the tides rise and rinse.
 
I can swim but the weaker ones will drown
no doubt the inundation will sweep them
as blown broom dust nests sit atop a pond
casts shadow on upward sea eyes beneath.
 
We must leave our stake, abandon the plot
unworthy of its keep at the edge of leaving;
the walls, children, mothers and fathers go,
poised to leap finally sprung from the fount.

 
photo credit: http://usercontent2.hubimg.com

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