we are most alive in dreams

twenty-five years and nine months ago,
my parents got together and made it so
a gunshot ringing out through the night,
i was the bullet that killed them both
robbing all ambition in the months of cold
and they both cried and cried

———————————-

i wasn’t supposed to happen
a mistake, a good one
my mom says, her eyes
green and amber are kind
and loving, the kind of eyes
i’d like my daughter to have
my dad never says much at all
he just sits and grumbles,
cigarette smoke piling
from his open mouth,
coffee staining the insides
of his old and weathered teeth

he says, “don’t ever do it,
don’t be a dumbass and give
yourself to someone else”
and i’m starting to listen

but then i look deep into his eyes
blue and gray with age
and they are bottomless,
he doesn’t have to say anything
i start to listen to his silence,
and now i understand
his heart was broken,
a long, long time ago
just down the street, perhaps
where they went to school,
held hands through the halls
and maybe he thought
that he had it all, but
a child was something he didn’t want

and i’m still listening
to both halves of,
a twisting and turning tale
of two people in love
that got their tails caught,
in a fan wrapped in barbed wire
twisting and turning,
til they are both dizzy, disoriented
in a crazy mixed up world

and i’m still listening

i may never know the story,
of the two people that fell in love
once they were people,
now they are my parents
when do they become, human again?
i may never know
but i’m listening when they are ready