the humble wool of their lives

she charmed them spinning poem out of story
and laughter out of words and deeply religious
their mother put on piety each day for holy Mass

all the while her kitchen crockery stood empty
her dish water whispered of drowning spirits
her coffee was rank with unheard confessions

her pots and pans were hot with delusion
when they walked Stations with her on Good Friday
in their seventeenth year they recognized their lives

as a Calvary of emotional whipping and crosses to bear
the father having washed his hands of them all
while she stayed to pit twin against twin

to cruely play with the humble wool of their lives
with games of schadenfreude and tag-you’re-scapegoat
until they grew too smart for her insane machinations

“One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.” Patricia Briggs in Bone Crossed

© 2012, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo credit ~ Vera Kratochvil, Public Domain Pictures.net.