Abused

Abused

You had me there, in your home
with your kids and your
tirelessly working wife.

You had me elsewhere - there.
In your indoor heated pool with
‘a bottle of 7&7'
as you said.

You had me there
in your car too,
the station wagon where we talked
of my parents’
dying.

Only they weren’t dead ...

Almost ... not quite ... dead ...
yet.

Why did you wait still, even then?

I came to you in your house, the indoor pool so inviting.
To tell you that Father had
just died.

All of 49 years of age,
with Mother to leave me soon
ten months thereafter.

“Here, take some of this....
you’ll feel better."

Go ahead.

A pharmacist who gave
my Mother the drugs to feel further
no pain.
To abuse her son
erstwhile
in your pharmacy office
on the floor in the dark and saying
that how much fun this was.

Did it occur to you
that enticing, exciting and
overpowering a distraught teen
was not the same
as consent?

Why be concerned
with such matters...?

I took the soup
of Black Velvet
and your ‘ol “7&7‘
to further insulate me
from death’s avarice
of my fathers loss.

And on your
pharmacy floor
in the dark
I thought about
all your
Boy’s State accolades,
all your
Masonic Temple tributes,
all your
wife’s
American Red Cross
efforts.

And I nearly bled to death
from this wound that ne’er
closes, not even when
I take pills from the pharmacy
for pain that ne’er goes away.
Amid the pictures of loved ones
whom I protected for this long
so that your secret could go to your grave.

For I was buried alive
all of sixteen years
who could not tell
my Mother upon her deathbed
what happened to me
when she entrusted you to
be a friend.

And what became of those
two little ones?
The ones who had
the free run of the house
whose pictures I still so plainly see
amid your awards
posthumously?

There
alongside the mints
in the candy dish.

Have another.

So lucky to have a
Daddy
like you.