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Ends & Means

from Seaglass Strange by Red O'Hare

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lyrics

I.

I drove you to the bus station.
I watched your
piss-yellow hoodie,
your stupid fucking hat,
your broken boots
stagger through
shining double doors.
Lit fluorescent
you became a stranger.
I screamed, my throat
scraped knuckle raw
the whole ride home.

II.

I wear our life together
like Pompeii wears Vesuvius.
Your fury, ash and pumice,
my twisted supplication
suspended in ancient stone.
I remember how it felt
to bend and beg
a volcano not to blow.

III.

It is hard
when the one you love
is hands that choke
is fists that clench
is punches
they said they pulled.
Is the mouth that spits
‘you are a liar
and you are a whore
and I can do better.’
The teeth
that bite and bellow
‘Why can’t you just be
fucking happy.’


IV.

I wear the years
since I saw you
like iron wears flame.
You made me
so much stronger
and I am grateful
all the same.
But just because
in the fire of your anger
i was forged like steel
beneath the hammer of your hate
I became a shining thing.
These ends, they do not justify
what you did to me.

It doesn't mean
you taught me
anything you meant to.
It doesn't mean I believe
you were ever being kind.
It just means
I’ll always wonder
the myths you're weaving now.

How you big-fished
my middle-class parents
into millionaires
our 3 bedroom house
into a mansion
and me
into the most beautiful girl
in the world.

It just means
your father's voice
drowned out mine.
It just means
you fed your monsters
til they loomed larger
than love.

V.

I drove you to the bus station.
Watched you
lopside stride, staccato-
I used to love
the roll of your shoulders
street-kid strong silhouette
and in Greyhound twilight
the sound of your boots
shuffled
your good-bye.

credits

from Seaglass Strange, released June 7, 2019

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Red O'Hare Portland, Oregon

Red O'Hare is a Ashkenazi Jewish American poet from Oakland, California where she featured twice with Bay Area Generations. A product of Presbyterian missionaries from the Belgian Congo and Eastern European carny folk, Red has been performing poetry for 20 years. She works in a bakery and is compiling a list of people who want her dead. ... more

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