Anathema

Drunken slurs.

A woman once was

The funny caricature in her ex-lover's poem

She sat feet outstretched in winter wind

On a January midnight

Old Monk in her hands

A glass with a square base

Fit into her hands like magic

Ice cubes clinked 

And it was all that moved

She spoke in indistinct 

Drunken slurs

As he drew her that night

Eight years later,

That ex-lover is a father

Of the child of another woman

And everyday, he dotes

On his naive daughter,

Who knows not one bit

Of what life holds

And packs her lunch box,

With the purple butterflies on it

And takes her pictures

The woman with the Old Monk

Eight years later,

Down the line, or so

Contemplates freezing Old Monk 

Into cubes in the tray, to drink that then

Such that it doesn't water down

And that her passing out each night

Take not as long

Simultaneously,

The woman tries to write a poem

About the new daughter, and the butterflies

And the utter obscenity of fates and heartache

Her drunken slurs, not much coherent.

The passage of eight years

Has been as cruel as healing

Everything happens for a reason

And yet, for no reasons at all. 

How they became whoever they did,

They would never know. 

But they did become their own.

Anathema. Anathema. Anathema.