Sonia's Poem 9/25/2002
MONDAY
Scrambled eggs are still stuck to the frying pan
and there are still two pieces of bacon
left on your plate, still on the table
next to a half finished cup of cold coffee
in which the milk is curdling:
It is a hot summer day
No one saw you for a week
nobody bothered to call or drop by
to see what was wrong
I don't like where this one's going
It isn't that nobody cared about you,
just that we knew nothing serious was wrong
maybe you had a cold or the flu,
but nobody dropped by with chicken soup
and delightful conversation
because we cared,
but we didn't care that much.
When we saw you again,
we would have our excuses ready,
like a sword, for protection of our humanity
"I had so much work to do, my kids were sick"
Perfectly reasonable reasons
why we didn't have to care.
So imagina what a shock it was
to pick up a newspaper one Monday morning
and find your picture littered on page 8
with two brief paragraphs
describing your suicide.
Maybe it was so short
because nobody cared enough to get to know you
So all we could tell detectives
Is that you didn't come to work one week
and we were busy and our kids were sick
so we never got the chance to stop by
with some chicken soup and delightful 20 minute conversation
(leaving us with 1440 minutes in which to do our work and take care of sick kids)
to see how you were, give you a shoulder to lean on?
and maybe stop you from downing those pills
and falling into an endless sleep.
Suddenly, our perfect excuses
aren't so perfect anymore.
Because i keep seeing the scrambled eggs still stuck to the frying pan
and the 2 pieces of bacon still left on your plate, still on the table
next to the half finished cup of cold coffee
in which the milk is curdling:
It is a hot summer day.
9/21/01
by Sonia (my old best friend from h.s.)
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