John Sargent, A Dinner Table at Night (1884) Source A t first you ask to talk, but
B urning deep within is the burden of words, a
C acophony of voices in your head,
D riving despair like a stake into wetted
E arth, a haze that settles in and just won’t shift. You
F ind a time and place to have the talk, you G o with the flow, tell it like it is, whilst H e squirms beneath the weight of I nnocence lost, guilt like a pall of smoke drifting in. He J okes about not meaning IT, but there is a K nowing that transcends the clarification of intent, that L ooms larger than any image words alone can paint;
M eaning that you don’t believe for even a second that N othing he has done was not intentional O r that there is any penance that may grant him forgiveness. P olite silence. A litany of burning, unasked Q uestions; how did you get HERE, is there a path to a R eturn, resolution, a coming back to the way things once were?
S ilence at least means T hat more words to regret are not being said U nwillingly you realise that this is a stalemate, no V ictor, no vanquished, only victims W restling with the detritus of pain and X-shaped scars. Y ou realise with unstinting certainty that this is it, the end; Z ero-ed out.
--- For the Day 10 Prompt at NaPWriMo - an abecedarian poem. Definitely one I’d like to revisit given how difficult it seemed for me. Thanks to The Fray’s How To Save A Life for rescuing me. :)