Beyond Recognition

He looks at her crying face
marked sharply with fear
as he asks himself
who is this woman?

 

He makes her suffer—
fingers gripped into
the bones of her arm
imprinting this new filth,
erasing 40 years in a series
of blows:


Blow by blow
there is emptiness;
Zen-less inhumanity
seizing every wire
in his brain.

 

Her tears reach him
suddenly, softening
everything while he
wonders why his wife
is crying, bruised and beaten,
with his hands like weapons.
He has nothing left
but a face he can’t recognize.


Aleathia Drehmer

Published by Gutter Eloquence, Issue 15