386: Rose Petals
This poem doesn’t exactly mince words with imagery, and I want to quickly warn readers so before I plunge them into something potentially unpalatable. I think it can offer relatable perspective; but I recognize that it creates a graphic picture. Please feel welcome to pass this one by if you wish.
I was going to explain what it’s about, but I can’t really do it justice. The image does a lot better than a summary can. But I’ll leave at least the context that brought me to the words, though it may make it more cryptic still.
I was listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry spends a moment alone in #4 Privet Drive after the Dursleys abandon it, and as he is about to do the same. He considers his old secret haunts: the refrigerator, Dudley’s computer, and the family television: forbidden oases, when his captors were away, where joy could be found in his torturous home prison. It is a familiar feeling, even if our homes were not so horrible as his. We all have known a place or two where we could steal away in secret to enjoy the strange thrill of what could be classified as ‘familiar forbidden fruit’. It is different than what would be called ‘novel forbidden fruit’. As Harry considers these old childhood escapes, he remarks that they now feel like a “younger brother whom he had lost.”
My heart is continually punctured for that lost little brother. He is gone, and I will never be able to introduce new loved ones to him. I always thought I would someday be able to share the thrilling and secret places that he loved with someone who loved me. I mused of going on little adventures with a partner, a family member after gaining sufficient trust, or even one of my own children if the circumstances were right, to reflect on our favorite secret spots and what they meant to us. But there comes a day when we, like Harry, must look at Dudley’s computer for the last time. We know we will never be able to show it to anyone. No-one will see the light in our eyes when we look upon it—the nostalgia. Only we: the husks, and the ghosts that once inhabited us, will remember it.
~~~
Two bullet holes bleed freely from his heart,
the flesh around the edges damp and dark,
like old, still-moist rose petals, red as art,
and where his gaunt mouth rests makes no remark.
He drips. And has done so e’er since he died:
when home was no more home than was a grave.
The first one comforted him when he cried
beneath the covers, propped up like a cave.
But when the second came, no solace won
within the fleshy heart as had the first.
When home was no more cozy grave, but gone,
and secret joy in misery was cursed.
No playing in the halls alone for you,
dead man: get out, you’ve nothing left to do.