Year number 11 is here as I cradle a card,the embossed letters,faded, empty frames without your faces,smiling ghosts,haunting my thoughts

Tied by barbed wire to a post, a single rose wilts, it’s secrets and memories I’ll never  share, for people now are too dense to truly grasp love and joy

Today in my heart beneath the surface,a funeral dirge and the quiet shuffle of feet here I sit remembering my childhood homes where warmth was like fresh baked bread but now has fled; in my ears memory I hear “I love you” from my Daddy and Mother

I literally scream,trying to send my heart to the stars, for when it bursts I’ll see them again; the words are like shards of glass in my throat

The pain only allows me to whisper into the empty apartment where I sit saying,“I love you,”for the two who will never receive the card, or the marigolds, and wisteria

Life, I hate you

Death I’d kill you if I could