• Dreams of an Imperfect Life
    I lay dying in my bed,
    my skin tough,
    folded and
    loose.
    My bones are brittle,
    chipped away by
    time, and worn from
    life. The effort to
    breathe pulls me
    down.
    My chest aches at first,
    than pain subsides, as
    it falls a final
    time.
    Weariness that claimed
    my final years disappears,
    and fresh light fills
    my mind.
    I’m taken somewhere new,
    somewhere old,
    a place unlike any,
    yet one I’ve been before.
    I’m dreaming, seeing my
    past become alive once
    again,
    seeing my life flash back in
    before me now.
    A child small,
    naïve,
    and unknowing.
    Too young to understand my
    place, too young to know
    where I lay.
    I age in to a boy who first
    begins to feel doubt,
    confusion, the shaded colors
    of remorse.
    I see what was once
    tragedy beyond words
    looks foolish to me
    now.
    A lifetime of experience
    has changed my views,
    and altered the way I
    see this world.
    I see my mother carry
    me through the waves,
    and I,
    not knowing how much
    I needed her. How many
    hardships, even grown in to
    a man, had I prayed
    for her hand?
    I see my father,
    who in memory stood above
    the world, but now stood
    by my eye.
    I had forgotten the way he
    was, the things that made
    me mourn his early death.
    Every morning, every night,
    the same chair to eat and
    rest.
    A gentle smile to move me
    through the day,
    a kind word to put me
    down to sleep.
    An old ache fills my
    chest, but I feel that I shall
    see him soon.
    My first girl, the one
    I thought I’d loved,
    breaks my heart again.
    The second one whose
    heart I broke
    instead.
    I see my wife,
    I see how beautiful she
    was,
    I see myself shove her away.
    Our child clings to her skirt
    as she walks out
    the door,
    and they both leave my side.
    They are not here,
    as I lay dying,
    because my arrogance
    had taken them away.
    Remorse, mistakes, they all
    pass by, one by one, the things
    that I had not done
    correct.
    I see my son be married,
    a woman prettier of heart
    than face. Her father dead,
    I walk her down the aisle
    to take my son’s
    hand.
    I see my first grandchild,
    going through so much
    that I did,
    the new confusions, and
    strangeness of a
    mixed up world.
    I see my lost wife’s funeral,
    the one that I did not attend.
    My son’s heartbreak
    of her death.
    Alone,
    I lay dying in this bed.
    I see his heart mend, and I
    witness the second child
    born to him.
    He loves the woman by
    his side,
    and I see that hell would
    not tear them apart.
    They grow older,
    and another child comes.
    This child dies.
    Ill at the beginning of its life,
    the winter stole her in
    the night.
    I see my son fall apart.
    I see his wife begin to die.
    Still they love each other.
    I see them heal,
    Their children alive
    cure their wounds, and bring
    them back from death.
    They get older, their eldest
    child leaves their side,
    moving on to horizons
    of her own.
    The second growing in to
    herself, becoming the woman
    that she shall always
    be.
    I see myself alone
    in my own home,
    the woman I’d loved long
    gone from this world.
    I grow weak, and frail,
    unable to hold myself up.
    My son is worried for me,
    and takes me away.
    He moves me in with him,
    afraid to lose me to
    the reaper haunting
    since the loss of
    Rosalie.
    He loves me still, despite the
    errors that I made, despite
    the flaws of life,
    despite the cracks.
    I dream of an imperfect life,
    one full of err
    and wrong turned paths.
    I lay dying as I dream.
    The light of life fades
    from me now,
    and my heart has ceased
    its beat.
    Regret leaves my side,
    its only gift,
    as I lay dying in this bed.