LETTER TO MY MOTHER/RUTH

LETTER TO MY MOTHER (2003)

I want you, Mommy,
To send the Monster away.
He stands beside my bed
And gathers to him
What please there is
To be gained by the sight
Of soft limbs
Splayed in slumber.
Fiction kept between us
That I am sleeping.
That he is sleeping.
That you are sleeping, too.
How could you not waken?
Didn't your bed feel empty?
Didn't you hear
The soft scuffle
Of slippers on the rug?
I heard the sound
And feared it.
I always hoped that you
Would magically appear,
My rescuer if you would.

reprinted from JOURNEY FROM DARKNESS, Candace E. Barnes


RUTH (2005)

I despise you:
Will not call you mother,
A title you do not deserve.
You GAVE me to him:
A living bloody sacrifice.
You sold your soul
In a pact with the Devil.
Sold your soul
And MINE.
I will never grasp your reasons.
Nor can I imagine what you gained.
What thoughts ran through your mind
As you lay listening
To my stifled cries for help?
How did you feel when he left me,
And came to you still glistening-wet from my bed?
Oh, yes, I heard.
And SO DID YOU.
Twenty feet is not so far away,
And yet the distance ws immense.
A chasm:
Cuttingn me off from my only hope of help.
Do you dream, Ruth?
Do you revisit those dark night of the soul?
I do.
Will you, in your last gasps of air,
Remember, and deny,
Or finally admit?