I am overcome

and my heart bleeds

with the violence of fiction and history.

Must this be art?

Intrigue and sorrow,

traitorous tales

of harm by the same hands

that should have protected.

Grief, that is harshly too real

as I look into their lives

of darkness and spoil–

hungers soothed in famishing ways–

true lives of dramatic loss

and loneliness

so hollow that many

fell into their own abyss–

taking others with them.

And I, alone,

am left to mourn.

Can we celebrate prose

at so great a cost?

DSH

5/2017