April PAD Challenge — Day Four

Prompt: Write a “departure” Poem

Leaving You

I replay our life
over and over again
like an old movie reel
black and white flashes
of a damaged marriage
And the flap flap flap
as the movie ends

I cannot stay
when your “I love you’s”
are followed by “buts”
Your conditions shred
my fragile heart, scatter
me across arid sands

You beg me
not to change you
to let you be
While you devise plans
to mold me
shape me into your ideal

I cannot be wife and whore
saintly mother and sinner
friend and confidant
defiled by your perversions
keeping your secrets
destroys me

No happy endings here
only a farce
I take away this baggage
and depart

©April 2015, Lori Carlson