Julie Jo (A Requiem) Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Julie Jo was strong by nature,
but the cancer whittled her bones.
A gentle and fragile creature,
she was rubbed thin by grim grindstones.
Her mind was cloaked in fogs of gray
with intermittent bursts of light.
In those moments, I felt the fray
sitting beside her through the night.

She told me of her troubled past,
the weight of the burdens she bore,
how all the years went by so fast
like rushing whitecaps to the shore.
Her children never came around,
and this filled her soul with regret.
Nine pairs of feet that walk the ground,
but none of them visited yet.

She was so young, a child herself,
unprepared to be a mother.
She quickly became someone else
swapping one drink for another.
She shattered dreams against the wall,
cursed the mouths that needed feeding,
could not let them get close at all,
could not stop her own heart's bleeding.

She worked until she could not stand,
fell off the cliff into the sea;
but no one took her by the hand
magnifying her misery.
All she knew was struggle and strife.
She was always about to break.
She even tried to take her life
and was ashamed of that mistake.

Her breath could not blow out a flame.
Morphine bedded her into dream.
Against the odds and all the same,
I called each child perchance to deem.
I left messages for them all.
I prayed they'd come for Julie Jo,
but nary one returned the call.
I held her hand as she let go.