Evictus

This poem is about the same thing as The Road to Hell, but the more I think about it, the more I think that sometimes something has to be completely demolished and the rubble cleared away for something better to emerge. But demolition and clearing take time and even then maybe nothing will end up being built...

(and notice how the rhyme scheme is different in the 2nd last stanza vs the rest of the poem!)

Evictus

It started as a house of fun
But rooms just vanished, one by one
Till we were trapped in one small room
As dark and airless as a tomb

We stepped on toes, it was so small
Until we barely spoke at all
Until one day as I had feared
That room completely disappeared

It was just like when it began
A cold and empty piece of land

One day perhaps we could rebuild
Make something good from something ill
A place with much more elbow-room
But not right now, nor even soon

we need to stretch, we need to see
what happened didn't need to be
each needs to cut the other slack
to cautiously find some way back

   Things ended with such bitterness
   that silent text-and-email fight,
   perhaps I hope too much I guess
   that I could somehow make things right.

A vacant lot remains it seems
with broken glass of shattered dreams
weeds overgrown, and the flowers dead
from things I wish I'd left unsaid.

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