Distant Relations Poem by Patti Masterman

She's just being herself,
She's just jealous and bored-
I tried to give excuses,
For the hateful and abhorred.

I tried to see their viewpoint,
To feel the pain they feel;
But it's hard to stay empathic
As I'm ground beneath their heel.

I've found the safest outlet
Is some distance: me from them;
Then I'm less in danger
From some evil on a whim.

And lies don't hold much meaning,
When they're all by telephone-
And once the calling stops,
Most the pain becomes unknown.

If you must become a stranger
To abide your kith and kin,
Don't be afraid to do it,
If sometimes you lose or win.

It's much too masochistic
To abide the pain they mete-
Especially when each time they come,
You know it's trick, not treat.

There's no ill that I wish them,
In fact; no wish at all:
I'm happier not seeing them;
No letter and no call.

Someday no longer living,
They should feel quite free to come
And hear my funeral sermon-
Because with them- I’m done.

I'll be more happy being dead,
That I'll have no more relations;
And my last wish is all of them
To bury some other location.

I don't want to share my soil,
My birdsong, or my shade;
And I don't want their graves dug
With the exact, selfsame spade.

I don't want to spend
The rest of my eternity,
Lying next to someone who
Would bicker territory.

I don't want surveyors taking
Readings of the lots,
So that grieving relatives
Complain of what they got.

I don't want dead flowers
Tossed upon my grave, from theirs;
And their fast food take out trash
Should stay with their own heirs.

I'll have the blood drained from my corpse
And thus be buried, dry:
So they'll have no reason then,
To stand up there and cry.

I won't be kin to anyone,
With no blood in my veins-
No reason to be jealous,
Hysterical, or strange.

In fact, it would be better
To move my headstone soon,
And only locate my poor grave
By the shadows of the moon.

Then no one will loiter
Over my poor dusty bones.
And only then the plot will feel
It has become a home.