April 25
FEEDING THE MONSTER
Who will feed the monster once they’ve made her? Her hunger burns in her like a beacon. Should I let her starve? Should I put her on rations of old crusts and
tepid water? Rebuke her as if she were
her own idea? Possibly bind her hands
and cover her eyes? Stand her in line
with the good girls and fit her in? Turn
her visage from her desire and tell her to forget? Hold her hand and tell her that’s
enough? When I stand in the face of her
yawning hunger, what do I say?
“It’s for your own good.”
Well, that’s what ‘They’ said, too.
Round the corners
and square your shoulders.
*
Blinded
Alcoholism hits me like a kind of blindness.
I stagger through the living room
cursing anyone who changes familiar placement
or published timetables.
Like every aspect of this disease
shocked sightlessness is mine to deal with.
I must pick up the white cane,
procure the Seeing Eye pup,
learn to read clustered Braille.
When my vision clears
in these well worked spaces I am relieved
but I must accept that when I walk into a new room
more often then not I will be blind again
and must pick up my walking stick once more.
You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane
and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault
