i let him live with me again

the jail

the rehab

the halfway house

the eviction by his now dead mother

all those trials

before this time

were not enough

he still stole from me again

after I told him how much it hurt

and how I could never do that to my father

he stole from me again

i forgave him

he moved out and I forgave him

then he said he was sober

and I let him back in

i knew his demon

addiction fosters savage temptations

and hurt toward loved ones

i felt our common-ground blood pulsing in him

i thought it could turn his conscience one-eighty

i was wrong

i got lost in a dead-end of parental hope

mired-down

in a beat-down cul de sac

then he stole my piece of mind

he stole my reserves

i was familiar with the tall grasses that distorted my view

and the muffled cries behind the square mute

that fit the feelings of my gilded coronet

i opened my ransacked heart

my ramshackle heart

faith stabbed me

the darkened sky shuttered the stars

his voice echoed the same empty promises

into the recurrent chambers

where i heard them over and over an over

until they became honeycombed

in my gut

i falsified my instincts

my intuition deflected harm into

my own soothing aphorisms

useless tulips bending in sludge

i forget too soon

anger rolls off my fear like a snowball in accretion

resentments bite me

i fence them off

butter my toast like nothing happened

and listen to the opera that kisses a new horizon

every morning a new photograph re-sets the day

maybe there is a hopeful tear

that drips from faith

the ghosts of karma will come

along with special-delivery emotions

still the knives of addiction slash my disposition

yet love is never divided

I forgive because I forget too soon

and the pain of letting it happen once again

is not as painful as the remembering