Thoughts and Prayers – by Renee Cronley

The pungent scent of sulfur

fires out from the gangrenous fumes

of societal decay we don’t smell anymore

and leaves behind another gaping wound.

It bleeds out of our memory quickly

before we stitch in unsettling thoughts.

That the stranger at the checkout counter

might live in his mind, diseased with anger

that ferments into indifference

and manifests into a piece of metal,

he unloads to silence lifetimes of laughter.

These waves of resounding grief echo

across communities like ultrasounds,

making diagnostic images of damaged

hearts nobody knows how to fix.

Cries dissolve into a layer of white noise

where tears are the constant drip drip drip

from the leaky faucet we learn to ignore.

Renee Cronley is a writer and nurse from Manitoba.  She studied Psychology and English at Brandon University, and Nursing at Assiniboine Community College.  Her work has appeared in Chestnut Review, PRISM international, Love Letters to Poe, and several other anthologies and literary magazines.