If Not You by Patricia Wallace Jones

If Not You

Who will stay with me
in a padded room
stripped but not clean
of vomit and urine;
sit cold on green tile
for 24 hours
to hold me alongside
our seizing, seething
child?

If not you,
when the ward sleeps
drugged and forgotten,
who will whisper
Heh, heh little girl,
wanna fuck,
make me laugh out
in hopeless enclosure?

by Patricia Wallace Jones

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Editor’s Note: A love poem doesn’t have to be sweet. Sometimes it can show you the raw heart of a relationship in the midst of tragedy.