Drowned

Like feet in well-worn shoes
that rub against the sides
and feel the loosening of years,
she feels the sameness
deadening all her tomorrows,
a numbing void of feeling,
dry, like old newspapers,
the story never told,
long overdue;
like stinking laundry,
enduring the drowning crush
of Cheer
and bleach
and dryer sheets.

Going through the motions
- the everyday routine -
the radio blasting out
the story of her life
in wailing notes on metal strings,
while dinner simmers
on a pristine stove,
a baby's bottom washed,
an aging parent soothed,
a scuffed knee bathed and dressed,
a once-but-no-more lover
fed and watered.
The table cleared,
the hum of busy dishwasher
drowns her life.

The quiet evening light
sifts through her drowning eyes,
which search with fruitless stare
for some new vision
of a sharp and brilliant future.
Nothing appears
to change the awful sameness.
The floods break through the dam
of eyelids swollen by old tears,
newly minted
in the furnaces
of expectations
and anticipations
disappointed.
The familiar, no longer safe,
entombing a dying spirit.