The World According to Poetry #5
Children’s Hospital
By Stephanie Wood Miller © 2019
Her children
Circle round her
Like bees around their dying queen
Uncertain what lies beyond serving her
She will not forgive them
For all they have taken from her
Her money, her time, her freedom
Her figure!
She has lived all of life
Fists clenched
Jaws set
The hard, negative charge
At the center of their meager universe
She dispenses her vemom
In measured doses
Enough to poison
But never kill
Even death won’t blunt her jagged edges
With her last breath
She exhales her final bitter legacy
They bicker
And worry their tattered love
Fraying
Lost without a center
To focus their tired rage