A Lasting Legacy
Maybe I can say that my snappish ways are bitchy
because I was abused as a child, that I wasn’t taught
how to be pleasant, that I have an abiding depression
which leaves me impatient and growly.
Maybe it’s the stage of life I reside in—that time
of the month or stress from my all-encompassing job.
Maybe you can say we are such different people,
how could we coincide in the same household
without friction, that we are too similar
and step on each other’s toes, or too sensitive—
bruised by the smallest insinuation.
After all the history and histrionics, all the years
with tears and tantrums, prickliness is the only thing
keeping us together, it’s long-lasting, thorned, irritation
has the ever-present audacity to continue spiking
sharp barbs, bitter bristles between us, long after the thorns
of bitter battles have dulled and left the battlefield
torn and bloodied—
even after we have both called it quits.
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Annette Gagliardi has poetry published in the Southwest Journal, Dreamers Creative Writing Online, Down in the Dirt Online Magazine, Trouble Among the Stars, Poetry Quarterly, Poetic Bond and others. She has work in three State’s poetry anthologies and her poem “Gourmand of Orange” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Image credit: The 1964 Pablo Picasso painting of a distorted blue face called “Untitled”