Thanksgiving 2015

            “Best wishes from our family to yours.”

                                                -Hallmark

Brutal: derived from a king slayer, warlord, philanderer,

who turned coat, turned his back, turned on

the trusting hearts hung near his own.

My sister’s brute sharpened heart, a weapon to drive

deep between the ribs of the man she once loved.

Not behind closed doors, a quiet killing.

No, a spectacle worthy of the Romans.

As our family gathered to give thanks for another year

of living, of loving, of one another.

Birth gave us front row seats in the Coliseum,

to watch a man bloodied by the ravages

of thirty years of unspoken stories.

I am the Hiritus of this moment, chronicling

what remains as Caesar shops for a new home

and the garden goes untended.

~Heidi Seaborn

Thanks to Gold Man Review for printing this poem in their Fall 2016 issue.