LILI

Lili 

Clouds across the Channel come from deep inside her lungs.

The newly born mum, with an uncomplete son. 

“He won’t hug me, he can’t love me like I prayed that he would”

She bargains with the angels 

And the God she hopes is good. 

Light another cigarette in tribute of the days

When she thought she saw the way, believed if only he’d stay:

They might do it, they might do it. They might make this place home.

But love will take you so far, 

Only faith can take you home. 

“You look just like your father,” She whispers to him now

“The crescent of your brow, the corners of your mouth. 

But you don’t sleep. You barely speak. 

You won’t tell me something’s wrong.

On your solitary pillar, like my own Saint Simeon.”

Lili slept on broken beds for seven years.

Foreign debt and self neglect and silent tears.

She had friends that came and went,

Her boy was heaven-sent, but it was no way to live. 

“Somehow I might learn to love you,

Because you’re all I have to live for,

Because you’re mine and all I live for:

Somehow I will learn to love you.”