Collection of Poems

Nighthawks

My blood boils.

Rage fills me like an inferno.

They always do this.

My parents.

They fight.

They drink.

I hate it.

I hate it because I know my parents are falling apart.

And I can't do anything to fix the pieces back together.

I should have seen the signs.

But I refused to believe them.

And now the cracks have exploded like the Hoover Dam.

And now so much water is rushing out and I'm drowning in the flood.

I go to church.

I read the bible.

I pray things will be alright.

But they just keep getting worse.

So every night I go to the bar.

It's in a dark, empty side of town on the corner of the street.

It's always open.

The bartender is the manager.

I go there to clear my head and drop the baggage that has consumed me.

There are others beside me there.

And they all have their reasons.

Stew, the guy sitting alone, won't let anyone talk to him but me.

He has his reasons.

He told me.

He doesn't trust people or himself.

You see he used to be part of a gang,

And they turned against him and made him kill his 6 year old daughter.

The girl in the red dress, her name is Shannon.

I feel bad for her.

She comes here to escape.

Escape her abusive stepfather.

William, the guy sitting next to her, can't find love.

He doesn't trust girls anymore.

Not after what happened.

Not after he caught his finance' with another man two hours before the wedding.

His heart was shattered into a billion pieces.

This bar is our place.

This is where our problems temporarily disappear.

I drink.

I laugh.

And I have fun.

Not a care runs through me.

It's like a Utopia of a billion never ending rainbows.

I've escaped my problems.

Then the bartender tells me to go home.

I stubble on my walk home, dreading the moment I would have to open the door.

Have to face my parents.

Have to put up with their fights.

The drinking.

The blaming.

The hate.