Memento

• Lucy Barton, Grade 12
• Poetry
• 2016

I awoke, lobotomised by an unholy hour, by an unseen soundly foliage.
Quick to my eyes came sight, of a scoundrel’s silhouette,
I went and, grabbed my gun from the closet.

On tippy toes towards the danger, I crept,
At once realising the sound of my wife, missing from bed;
Her stifled terror – the panicked breath,
I barged in, awaiting no longer, and shot the intruder dead.

She was draped by the shower curtain, My God!
And as if it were, a deathly cloth for the murdered,
With the grip of a serpent; I couldn’t pull it off.
I sat there stupefied, mesmerised, by the poetry of her lips,
That stuttered and stopped. No blink came next.

From no-where I was lunged at,
Vexed forthwith by glass cascading about my head
I crumpled to the floor, by side my lovely wife, who was surely dead.
A shattered mirror above my utterance of a life, reflected this.