Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

The Forgiven

If this keeps up
I won’t be poor for long.
If this keeps up
he’ll have to eat his words
and stop telling me
I don’t know what a put is.
He sits in that blue velvet recliner,
the one I bought him for twenty bucks,
telling me how stupid I am,
telling me I don’t know anything,
telling me I’m not a doctor.
Maybe so,
but I’m not the one who gambled away everything.
I’m not the one who tosses down valium like popcorn.
I’m not the one who is too stupid to know I’m being eaten away
by a disease day after day.
I’m not the one who doesn’t know what day it is
or repeats the same question twenty seven times in an hour.
I used to be his favorite.
Now, I’m his favorite target.
I try to hold it in.
I try not to argue back.
I try to just visit him,
cook for him,
give him his pills and leave.
But the truth is,
I’d like to smash his face in.
I’d like to take that rusty metal fry pan that sits on the stove
and whack him across the head
just to make him to shut up.
But I know I can’t do that.
So I tell myself it is the disease.
I tell myself he is not who he used to be.
I tell myself
to forgive him.