The Right to Complain
I won’t compare and contrast
the pain in my life to others
like a dutiful rhetoric student
composing an obligatory essay
assigned by an older teacher
nursing his retirement years.
I want the pain to be mine.
I want to own the hurt.
I want to feel my daughter's divorce,
my son's vandalized car,
my dog's surgery.
I won’t compare my life events
to the ravages of a hurricane
blowing an island paradise into the sea
or the latest mass shooting
composing a cemetery from a concert
or the death of my best friend's daughter
cancer slicing her life in half.
But why can't I complain
when people ask me how I am?
Why can't I bray my petty pipings
in the grieving face of real tragedy?
My maiden aunt often said:
"You are only in your own skin."
Does that comfort me?
- © Vern Fein 2021
A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over one hundred fifty poems on over sixty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven's Review, Nine Muses, Monterey Poetry Review, and Corvus Review.
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