Staring at better days from the cage

It is 9:50 am
I’m no longer tired,
but tired out.

I think about my mother
pinned down by her husband.
Unable to live.
Forced to live his life instead:
One without air,
or beauty
or love.

I think about my sister
who in seven weeks
will have a child.
She has had no childhood.
Now she drinks
and inhales twenty-a-day,
Desperately trying to find something
without the aid of the means
she was always denied.

I consider my father
who is old now
and constantly attacked by depleting health
We know so little of each other
And there is little time left,
but he was once stone to me.
Discovering the life in him
makes death seem more apparent.

Then I consider her
-truthfully she is always there.
The one who saw and felt
the real me, who she can no longer trust.
The one I want to curl up with,
to laugh with, to breathe with
to cry with and to dance with.
But she is somewhere else
with someone else,
rediscovering all of the above.

It’s now 10:02am
and I stare blankly
and wantingly
into better days
from this cage;
Hoping, but never expecting
to be let out soon.