I could never look at him
directly
that would have been unwise,
perceived as a challenge.
Often I witnessed his temper rise
red hot.
His cold blue eyes would pierce me
even as he looked into me
from the side.
The look always caught me like
an unwilling fox kit
with her tender foot snared
in a determined trap.
I would contemplate polar opposites:
gnawing the paw off would enable me to escape...
(if even momentarily?)
and/or doing nothing
(would it have been better to accept
the ready open-handed slap?)
Often too, I wished
to evaporate?
And a full-formed thought would creep in:
Wouldn't it be fine
to be rain?
To be rain on a warm day in Spring.
The warmth being his ever rising
battering ram of rage;
the rain, being me.
Rain so willing to rise,
rain so willing to dry up.
One day I turned and faced him.
Met his cold blue steel gaze
with my glaring indifference.
It was as if someone struck him.
He winced and could not return my gaze.
I saw tears form, rise and well up
in the corners of his cold blue eyes,
They merged and made a raging river
rushing over the the crags of his
rugged cheeks.
I saw he was: a proud man,
a sad man,
a man who was very weak.
Instantly he was so all alone.
So found out and so incomplete.
I had made him weep.
Did I forgive him?
I did.
And people wonder why.
Copyright December 9 2011 All Rights Reserved By Author
Melissa A Howells Meloo of Tilt-a-World
