Remnants

Sitting on the front steps of a long porch In the middle of the deep south Little Billy looked up at his drunk dad Hanging on to every word spoken out of his mouth Leaning into Mama on a church house pew In the buckle of the Bible belt Little Hope searched to find the spirit Everyone said they felt Laying down atop a backseat of clothes In the thick of the big city slum Little Smokey looked for his father To return from a never ending beer run Peeking through the hole in the wall In a place no human should ever live Little Jezze pushed against contact With the men who demanded she give ...remnants Bill gathered himself together Deciding to see the other side of the world He vowed to never touch liquor The day he married "Daddy's Girl" Hope picked up her religion And placed it nicely on a shelf She vowed to never lie In order to be someone else Smokey took his opportunity To leave the slum with pride He vowed to live out in the open And never again try to hide Jezze escaped the world of sin On a plane headed to the states She vowed she would never give To a person she hates ...among the remnants Funny how circumstances can change But behaviors bring ya right back To the place where terror was experienced In the threads that bind the black When the weather gets cold And the heart yearns for the comfort of home The remnants in the quilt come together To remind the broken, you are not alone We try to cut out the dark night In the sparse light left in the day Getting so angry with the remnants For always being in our way When patterns emerge into images On the face of Grand-mama's quilt Let the need for belonging Shed the unwanted guilt ....of cleaving to the remnants Written by Trudy Schrader on 07-13-2019