Prescience

Your taste for literature did not come from your father, who read little. But from your mother, who taught it. You wondered how, being so different, they could have formed a union. But you noted that in you there was a mixture of the violence of the one and the gentleness of the other. Your father exerted his violence on others. Your mother was sympathetic to the suffering of others. One day you directed the violence you had inherited towards yourself. You dished it out like your father and you took it like your mother An empty room patterns the tears Ingrains the days with haunting presence Always angry at what's been said and been left unsaid Reaching backward but we are finished Smiles and fleeting moments Or farewells as disease takes hold Stumbling hopes and chance to remain in your presence Withheld