Kitchen Chairs
the legs on my kitchen chairs, bought on sale from
not-so-fabulous goldsteins furniture outlet
are beginning to crack under the pressure of too many
burdens plopped down by a dysfunctional family
troubled minds and angry souls venting in the heart
of the house where we all gather on my mother’s birthday,
christmas eve, or in times of a crisis, but never for dinner
anymore… anyway i wonder if that’s how you felt at the end
like the legs on my kitchen chairs
unstable breaking coming unhinged.
i never would have guessed you were losing ground
giving up the battle perhaps afraid you’d never win the war.
yet the last time i saw you sitting on one of my kitchen chairs,
you joked about your past mistakes, your fucked-up marriage,
and your drunk-and-stoned years after high school after
our best-friend days – but before you found jesus
or he found you desperate for salvation. where was he
i’d like to know that sullen april night when you decided
you had enough of what life couldn’t offer and alcohol
couldn’t dull? did he guide your hand as you signed your
bed-time notes – instructions for the living on how to handle
your dying a week later in a coma. did he whisper in your hair
“come with me I will make you whole ”
as you swallowed life’s regrets with a swing of warm beer
that left you cold… or did you leave him a note too?