Slipping Away

I can no more slip into my car,
pull out of our driveway
and never come back
any more than the moon
can slip its tethers
and drift away.

Depression runs
in my wife’s family
like banks along a river,
the chance of being overwhelmed
always there.

She lists
between clarity
and paranoia.
She sits all day on the edge
of the sofa, iPhone in hand,
watching videos.

Her hearing nearly lost,
sometimes I feel like an auctioneer
always raising my voice
to get her attention.

How much for this broken woman,
unable to cook,
to bathe herself, to brush
her teeth, to take a phone call
from her one son?

How I long
to have a wife again
to hike among ferns with,
to admire the frothy dress
of a cloud with.

How can I leave
my ill wife, 63 pounds,
who barely eats,
who refuses any kind of help—

who often is convinced
that everyone
is out to steal
our money—sometimes
to kill us.

For hours
she becomes a knot
unable to be
untied.
Change is a phone call
she never wants
to answer.

Over and over
I think of leaving.
“In sickness and in health…”
How can I let go?

I know…I know…
the moon never releases
her hold on us, never
abandons us.

Yet nothing,
not even its light,
can fill the empty space
that is scripted always
to separate us.

Your Mother, My Wife

Your mom
sits all day, every day
gazing out as if from a train’s car

at the landscape blurring by.
She has no desire
to leave her seat.

She pays no attention
when the train brakes,
one more station…

all the same to her,
no one she wants to embrace,
to acknowledge:

Not her son. Not her sisters.
Not her precious
granddaughter.

Desolation swept in
on a brooding wind,
and stays, whipping hopes

around like old newspapers
on an empty lot.

Depression is a wound
that doesn’t look for closure.

“I have no future,” she says.
“Let me die.”

This is the woman I loved,
whose kisses I couldn’t get
enough of when we were dating.

Kisses then were like cash
strewn across the roadway,
the armored truck spilled

on its side.
I couldn’t believe my luck.
Never have I felt so rich.

Yet here we are.
Mom’s future, like her body,
like her heart, wrecked.

She is a leviathan
swimming alone
in the deepest depths.

Though we cast our nets
of love, we can’t reach her.

She refuses counseling.
She doesn’t brush her teeth.
Doesn’t bathe.

She is like a shark
who stops swimming,
who sinks to the sea’s floor.
What are we to do?
What?  What?

Betrayal

Can you take our phones away,
to the porch, so no one listening
on them can hear?

You know I’m growing weaker
and shrinking faster.   It’s the milk.
Someone loosened the carton’s cap

 after I had tightened it.
It tasted bitter…like almonds.
You know what I’m saying?

“Our son is poisoning you?”
She hangs her head, nods.
There’s more I haven’t told you.

Our realtor you hired to sell
our house?  We talked to her
on FaceTime yesterday?

 That wasn’t her.  She had her voice,
but it was someone else…
dressed like her;  her hair even

was dyed the same blonde.
Did you notice?  I didn’t want
to mention it.  I was afraid

you’d say I was paranoid
again.  There’s more, Bob.
They’re trying to control us.

“What are you talking about?
Who?”  But she turns quiet,

her secrets still safe
from someone whose trust
is evaporating

before her eyes.
It’s harder and harder
to tell what’s altered

and she squints at me, as if looking
for clues of my betrayal
in my clothes…Is that
a blonde hair?  

Bobby Bradshaw is retired and living south of San Francisco.  He is a fan of the Rolling Stones. Mick may not be gathering moss, but Bob is. He is looking for the perfect hammock to spend his retirement in.  Work of his can be found at Apple Valley Review, Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, Eclectica, Dodging the Rain, Ekphrastic Review and many other publications on the net.