Better Late

In the beginning, I sought liberation years of analysis, solitude, meditation to make perceivable a sense of being fractured by layered dislocation.

I faced our video-split screens, desperate to incarnate, to vindicate. I witnessed validation, frame by frame trapped in our Holocaust’s aftermath, frozen, inchoate.

Why did I trace my mother’s wrinkles? My curiosity to decode moments of intimate proximity to unravel enmeshed gestures, invisible sighs to source my trauma’s source, to regain sanity.

Smothered in ailing false hope, I clutched at angels’ wings.

I peered into seemingly innocent glances to match perceptions behind naivety with apperceptions of entrenched resentments to confront sadistic, ruthless, shameless truths.

My beliefs needed urgent modification, not medication.

Belatedly I returned to your trembling flesh to unmesh our ailment, our mutually imprisoning privation.

With humility, we embraced each other’s breath to bid adieu to our entombed emotions.

Each sigh delayed the inevitability of death.

Finally, our duty done, we untangled mangled time no longer fated to enact enmeshed duplicity separate and safe enough to embrace our unique vitality.

Ethics statement

Ethics approval

The Author declares that no ethics approval was required for this poem.