Fragments of My Life

Fragments of my life
Interrupt my dreams
Of a childhood not remembered.
Nothing to cherish,
Nothing to feel.

Colors, smells, lights,
A fleeting thought
An unfinished memory
Take me back briefly
Then abandon me.

Nightmares haunt me.
Rolling waves of gray
Coming towards me,
Putrid smells
Night sweats.

A naked man in my room
Creaking sounds from upstairs
A prison wall outside my window
Muffled voices down the hall.
I lay awake shivering in the heat.

Fragments of my life…
A clown’s face in a window
A little girl lost riding her bike.
A man in a mauve car, prowling
I can smell the color mauve.

Men in prison garb
Marching down the road
Black wrought iron fences
Green and red flashing lights
Sirens in the night.

My father yelling
My sister screaming
My mother weeping
My brother terrorizing
I cover my eyes and ears.

Fragments of my life…
A rat infested town
Mountain lions behind a wall
Escaped prisoners in the woods
Fat smiling faces with no teeth.

I am left alone
My sister leaves on a train
A desolate whistle trailing
In the gray afternoon
Train stations haunt me.

I sleep in my sister’s room
With stairs to an attic
I think she is hiding there
Alone in the darkness
To console me at night.

Fragments of my life…
I go to the woods
With my friend, Bobby.
We make forts
We kiss and hold hands.

I am left alone again
Bobby leaves me
To get blown up in Nam
I struggle to keep him
In a pleasant place.

My brother visits
With his new wife
My sister visits
With her new husband
They leave and I am alone again.

We bury my mother first;
My father three years later.
The fragments of my life
And my childhood
Are buried with them.

My daughter asks me
To tell her about myself…
I don’t know who I am
Because I don’t know who I was
And I cry.