Relapse
When the drought subsided I could have sworn,
Kids riding bicycles around the corner
Waved to me as if my house wasn’t two stories
Of beaten brick and morning glories,
Drying like sweet raisins,
Speckling the lawn in purple patches,
Where no broken brown glass
Contaminated grass laid lifeless,
Existing only to baptize my sins,
But I wasn’t religious anymore,
So I watched the windowpanes crack,
Like thin ice that had been stepped on the wrong spot,
I watched the shattered glass cut deep
Into my skin, where no one could find it,
I watched the concave roof collapse like wet paper,
so
slowly,
the sun set before light could shine through the other side and show me the hidden message I had been searching for.
I watched…
When the rain fell I watched it fall through,
It dripped from the lips of bottlenecks,
On days when the clouds made a wreck-
Of the sky,
“Water will clean the wound” they say,
This was my water
Are my wounds healing yet?
Dripping From holes in the walls,
Where whispers from neighbors
Smothered the morning glories with heavy downpour,
And I prayed for the first time in years,
That all the little purple flowers would drown and die.
About this poem
I wanted to open the poem in a modern day neighborhood, where everyone could visualize themselves and connect to the poem immediately. The true setting is meant to take place inside the mind of the narrator and Morning glories debut a beautiful symbolism as they are naturally the flower that symbolizes renewal and transformation, I needed them to act as a vessel for the narrators struggle to show the internal battle that they and anyone going through rehab face. A very personal poem that hopefully helps illuminates this perspective. more »
Written on September 27, 2023
Submitted by altraveler2000 on September 27, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 47 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XABBXXXXX CXXXXA C XXXDXAXXXCXD |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,254 |
Words | 237 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 6, 1, 12 |
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Citation
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"Relapse" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/170769/relapse>.
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