A Once Good Man Lost
I was walking
Out for the first time
Since then
Since, I don’t know when
Feeling naked
Hearing “cho mo”*
Over and
Over again.
In there
Out here
Exposed;
There’s a list
You Looking?
Them exposed
I looking
I clicking
Walking quickly
Rapid breathing
Hear it?
It’s “cho mo”
Or is it
“no mo”
Who is he?
Or is it me?
I think
There’s one!
A distraction
Dance recital?
Possibly
My life
Flashes in
Front of me
Walking quickly
From her
From my past
From the looks
Noticing
Yet another
And another
And another
And another.
They are terrifying iridescence
In seeing them
a crime in only seeing.
I need no registry.
A beautiful
Poison that
Kills when
Eyes only
Fall upon them
Five of them
In one mile
When all I did
Was clicked.
It’s life.
It’s a life.
On a cute little
List.
I take a taxi home
Where there were
Once my kids
Once my love
Once someone
Loved me.
Once on
a screen
I clicked.
Once I had a home
A job
A father
A Mother
A Family
Lost.
Two floors
Above
A family moved
In.
The police informed me
With a warrant
Of course.
Lips quivering
Around the cold
Steel
Hands trembling
I click it.
The comments
Below the
Scattered constants and vowels of me
Of what was more than
Anyone cares
To see
Was me.
It read,
“Thank heaven!
Let’s pray
More will follow.”
A once good man lost.
*Child Molester
Earl Yarington (LMSW) is a social worker and school bus driver. He taught literature and writing for nearly 20 years and spent 3 years working in forensic social work internships with offending populations, including work at Delaware Correctional facilities and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has a PhD in literature and criticism (feminism/women writers) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Master of Social Work from Louisiana State University, and an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Arts from Arizona State University, where he studied the impact of visual image and girlhood in media/social media. He also has an MA and BS in English from SUNY College at Brockport. The opinions and analyses that Earl writes are his own and are not necessarily the positions or views of his employers, the agencies he supports, or that of his colleagues. Reach out with comments or questions.