28

Divorce

It started with marriage
sans forethought past familial appeasement
to prevent "living in sin."
We were two veterans already disabled
from festering wounds
of this ongoing war
with each other, ourselves.

The worst was the waiting up
past his 5am requested curfew,
lying in bed alone. Or
the 3am phone call from a taxi cab driver
refusing him service till I came down and paid
for him to stumble upstairs,
drunk and lipstick smeared face
and not ever after
any apology.

My marriage had no armistice,
no peace treaty, no asylum, no refuge.
My marriage was the U.S. in Vietnam--
no victory, no admittance of defeat, but
at some point,
there is no more point, no option
but to withdraw.

27: "NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee"

My Sins Against God

aren't original.
I wasn't the first
to steal from family
(sorry, sis, for that buck-eighty-five
gleaned off your carpet
while you were at show choir).

I cheated
on Chem tests
in high school, but I was slutty
with answers at age eight,
preferring the insidious ambiguous
term collaboration
for signaling cross-classroom
my multiple choices.

My sins against God
been going on for a while.
Probably began with my mouth, a two-year-old liar
thinking only of Self
to skirt deserved spankings. Red-hands, but
"I didn't do it."

But dear God forbid
I trade in tenderness
to contract malice, or despair.
Those sins will eat the soul,
grinning.