Last Night Home Poem by Charlotte Ballard

I was stripped of my baggage
As I fled from your fury.
Your hand lifted up to strike
My devotion to you-
Born out of deep
Love and affection
(Or so the commercial goes)
Was the first to go.
Next my private love notes
Whispered and gathered
Quietly like pansies growing
Wild in a field were
Ripped up and thrown
Carelessly aside.
Each one nurtured in the
Dark of night when the
Fluids of our bodies had
Mingled and had not yet
Dried on my thigh.
A tender smile that
Would creep up as I
Remembered your image,
Long past our
Ritual phone calls to speak of
The weather and what
Sally was doing, this or that,
Opened up into a silver scream
That ruptured into blood silence
And poured down around my throat
Where your strong hands were
Locked around.
Eons later, being released
My baggage gone,
I still flee.