Shrivelled
Haibun
The son’s once impotent rage had given way to a self-deluding knowledge of the world he lived in, where he accepted everyone /his father/ for who they were, yet found himself needing to explain his acceptance /of his father’s narcissism/ over and over again; he protested his apathy enough to perchance allow detachment’s cool roots to plant itself in him, but his veins pulsed as he explained all over again that the past was the past /the casual physical-verbal-abuse of his childhood/ and he was soooo over it all . . .
yet he remembered
every instance he’d been made
to feel unworthy
The father, ensconced in the mythical delusions of his superiority, the perquisite of the sole earner /no longer the only, but of course, everything belonged to him anyway/couldn’t understand why his son didn’t love him enough to do whatever he asked; he had after all raised him /paid for him to be taken care of, given all the amenities/ he had to be loved in return; and anyway, he was successful, he had solutions to everything, his son just had to leave everything in his hands . . . and everything would be perfect; but his son, despite all the chances he gave him/even when he got bad grades/ all the hurt he felt when he couldn’t brag like his friends did/would he ever have grandchildren/, all the forgiveness he granted /for not being the perfect son / and yet, his son didn’t care for him, didn’t listen to him . . .
delusion recrafts
present, past; leaving only
him happy, content
Both hurt, both hurting, wage wars of words, reiterating their arguments to the unhearing ears of the other; their tempers rising, rising, until something outside forces them to stop for the moment; neither’s torment is quenched; and so, it starts all over again . . . with each war as they swallow their misery, their inability to gain closure, they curl inward; the black hole of desolation in their center absorbs their emotions; they fall back on brittle patterns of repeated words; each blaming the selfishness of the other . . .
two hearts branched from the
same tree, shrivel into peas,
lonely together
A response to the inimitable Tre L. Loadholt’s prompt — Haibun a Heart.
© Indira Reddy 2020
