Across from…across…across from you,
I’m making plans…incisions on your heart…
choices are like shiny knives
to cut our bonds apart.
She has to move out of her house
and into a nursing home,
something I said would never happen.
My divorce from Aurora and child support
has tipped the scales of my finances…

Beyond these walls lies certain death,
for within the confines of this tender decay,
she finds comfort
The peeling paint, the stained
and cracked plaster walls
Cemeteries for the portraits
of departed love spirits clinging to nails
Where time hides between years
making itself known on anniversaries,
birthdays, and past lives we mourn.
Creaking floorboards under the weight
of an old woman’s body

Delicate footsteps echo
through these dusty rooms
Bouncing off faded photographs
Familiar faces from years long past
one by one they vanish
Frozen fragments of happier times
So far removed from present-day sadness
Boxes to hold a life
Faded pictures bringing smiles
and just as quickly, stinging tears

All the while, creaking floorboards echo
Her clouded eyes follow me, Watching…
as I remove her life piece by piece by piece…
Bubble wrapped coffins
for some storage unit mausoleum
As she moves slow and steady,
stepping through time portals
in this broken-down house.

Creaking dry wood and dryer bones
play along to rusty radio ballads
from big bands of dream-scaped yesterdays
Twisted fingers and crooked hands
carefully grasping a wheeled walker

She looks at him again every day,
passing by his image
on the cracked plaster wall
I hand her his photo,
she sits in her chair next to a piano
she hasn’t played in years
Gazing at his face, fingers tracing his lips
recalling that smooth Italian
telling stories as vast as the world is round
Or long as warm August nights
Walking hand in hand
along New England waters
talking hours on end
with promises of forever…
never arriving

The sweetest songs of love he would sing
as they danced under
the twinkling starlight
of mirror ball magic
reflecting back in his eyes…
now just a faded photo in her hands…
one of many looking down on her

Lonely dancer on an empty stage,
empty home and empty world,
every day remains the same
playing tricks with misty names
Creaking voices mocking.
Nails on chalkboard memories
screeching out continuously.
Whispering relentlessly.
Walking through her past
as we’re walking out the door
Echoing his name to angels
waiting in the wings
to take her to where
her lover sings

Across from me, across from you,
a friendship that’s been cut in two
this crooked course we now must take
this falling out as your heart breaks.
Across the days and scattered years
across the lines from eye to eye
a sound that I can’t stand to hear
the distance is my cross to bear

Gradually we’re stripped away
of everything we have
All our wants are overshadowed
by our needs
Everyone we’ve ever loved
will eventually pass away
As every day is subject to
the things we’ve never done.
We are reduced by fractions
in varying degrees
Distractions of love and loss
Interactions and subtractions
Peeled away by layers of life
Stripped away by those closest to you
Lulled to sleep with tender promises
Comforted in perfect deception
Abandoned in times of greatest need
Reduced to zero through ciphered years
A home to a room
A bed to a box
To the merciless earth
and finally, to an audience of worms

©2024 TM DiSarro / From: THE BUSHMAN

I have a new collection of poetry arriving in December