Hopelessness feels like cold concrete waking every morning to greet your feet with a friendly reminder of how far you've fallen.

Hopelessness smells like the sins of men seeping from their pores, relentlessly circling your soul like a ghost longing to die again. 

Hopelessness sounds like screams of guilt in the middle of the night, fear and regret wailing as one chorus in a song for the Devil's dance. 

Hopelessness tastes like the innocent blood they say is on my hands, like the blood they demand in return. 

Hopelessness looks like any man dressed in white waiting for mercy to fill his veins, to reunite with the victim he never claimed. 

She was a flickering amber light in the shadows, a subtle beauty nearly consumed by the night around her. She listened intently to her suitors, knowing full well I was her audience. We had met before, only once for a mere moment. She had approached the bar waiting for her sister and suggested a wine whose name I can't pronounce. 

"If you want to make it 'til Tuesday, Monday nights are for wine," she whispered in my ear as she tapped her fingers along my shoulder, debating whether or not to tell her story. But her sister walked in and whisked her away and now I had a second chance to decipher my runaway Mona Lisa.

Courage married my adrenaline and I practically galloped to her table, the silver knight off to steal his queen. Mid-laugh, she looked up at me and stood, and I almost fell over in shock, completely out of body and mind. I stammered then quickly pulled myself together, "You recommended a wine for me once, and I can't say that I enjoyed it or remember its name, but I must have you. I mean, yours." 

She placed her glass on the table, abandoned my competition, and whispered once again in my ear, "You were right the first time."

I hate to say it, but as the story goes, we were alone in her apartment before the night was over and I couldn't resist letting her run her fingers through my hair, the fingers I had felt so long ago brush against my shoulder only as a memory. She twisted through my Shirley Temple curls and danced her nails down my cheek. Her hands were warm and welcoming except for one icy finger dressed in white. I immediately pulled away in disgust, how had I not noticed before? She rolled her eyes in reply, buttoned up her shirt, and as she walked out the door she turned around to say, "When you took the wine I gave you, I knew you weren't man enough to play."

So torn and confused, how can we decide whose side to choose? 

Their screams echo and reverberate against our skin,

and we wince and wish we could wither away.

But that would expose the naked truth

they work so hard to hide behind us.

Their secrets we must protect. 

Sometimes we close our eyes and pray

that another family would inherit our

loyalty but not demand it so blindly.

And just when the cracks in our foundation spread so far we fear the

crumbling is almost near, 

we hear two words, then three,

then the other repeats

and they are silent for a time,

and then they weep.

And we weep with them, for them,

and for us. 

For the cycle, the tangled web continues and none can escape its 

vicious weaving. 

Awoken by my own cries in the middle of the night,

I had lost my first born in the first minutes of his life.

Stripped away from my arms by nurses in white, 

Fallen angels all too eager to pluck him from my side. 

I reassured myself it was just a bad dream, 

But I could see his blue toes, wispy hair, soft cheeks, 

And dainty eyelashes that never got to flutter butterfly wings.

I begged my husband to wake up, pinch me, shake me, bring me back to real life. 

But his words were far from soothing, they were sharper than the doctor's knife.

He gently rubbed my back with his hands that had held him once too,

And I fell back into the memory of my nightmare come true.

To escape the consequence of my childhood mischief,

I erased their memories of my rebellious resistance.

Their minds could chase but never catch me in a lie,

the gaps in time and space were my perfect alibi.

The author of my past- I could control, alternate, delete.

The forging of my destiny was grounded in deceit. 

Their lust for perfection compelled my correction, 

their threats of rejection justified my intervention. 

Now forever I'll be their sweet answered prayer, 

and in spite of my strength, it's the burden I bear.