never forget

your blood stains my shirt,
and I am supremely unimpressed;
I look at your body
with the same disdain
as when you were alive,
moments ago;
you are gone now,
no longer a waste of oxygen,
no more a brute,
no more a monster;
you now seem so small,
so incapable of horrific deeds,
and maybe that smallness
is just what my soul needs;
you now go, wherever it is
that we all go,
eventually,
to nothing,
or to everything
for which your putrid life
qualifies you;
and I sit, quite unconcerned,
as the bloodstains go from
crimson
to brown,
and as life is now righted,
having been turned
upside down;
justifiable?
not even a question,
as your obituary
will never mention
your whippings,
your derision
of all that I ever sought,
not to mention
all of your machinations
to gain more attention
of an ego so overwrought;
you miserable, wretched,
bitter old person,
now you have learned
the ultimate lesson:
an abuser always meets
the fate that they set,
and what they receive
is that the abused
never forget.



November 22, 2009. From the forthcoming collection, Spoken Rage.

Copyright © 2009, Ricky A. Pursley. All rights reserved.