Pastoral Care for Vickie Outside the warm lighted classroom with the rain banging on the road you stopped in here at last to say you were leaving. Two cities in less than two years before that you have forgotten how many. This time the going hurts more for the tall red-headed boy with the rain in his hair and steaming jumper stands moonfaced in the open doorway watching you as in a flood you tell me how the crowded years have been. And I wheel silently confounded at the centre of your desperation - your hooded half smile toward the door 'Lee cares - and at least he's gentle.' Before him the boy with the knife and other things that will bang in my head like the rain, tomorrow, after you're gone with a neat red line through your name. You always sat somewhere vaguely to the left and I taught you more about talking in class than I ever did about poetry tossing your hair with wild defiant eyes. But now you are easy, 'See ya then Sir thanks for evrythin - and for lisnin.' Swinging down and out to the tall boy with the red hair. I watch you go, silently to the outside where the rain is banging on the road - and more, here with a pile of papers I close my eyes against an early darkness. Humid heat and sticking, my blue shirt sags my fingers are clenched at rough edges of the desk and I pray to whatever gods there be: that you can go this time, in safety, somewhere. |
Veronica's Song The Sixth Station Of The Cross She makes it just in time simply by a minute pushes to the front his face already pressed between pages of her past with hers now pressed at him beneath the latest weight of wood he pauses at an arm's length from her thin grip on sanity bearing the burden of a world gone mad upon his back his face a peeling mask of bleeding salt and tears she moves to him lifting the loose folds of her robe gathers them in swathes and bandages about his broken head and he prints out his agony into her hands upon her soft dress cloth shocks them with the stab of thorns and nails and fire as always as before brings her back from the edge of darkness as always as before leaves her with nothing but the knowledge of himself. |
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