Inheritance

 Inheritance 

Sometimes I lose hope in other people.
Listening to all the lies and deceit…
It is hard to believe in their futures
when they trample your hope beneath their feet.
Yet, I try so hard to cling to that hope
and that they are trying to get better,
that he will stop drinking and sober up
or she will stop meth, if we just let her
have another chance, she’ll do it this time!
In the end, I am not disappointed
so much as I am pulled into sorrow
for my hope means nothing next to their kids
being cheated of their own tomorrow,
being cheated of happy memories,
being cheated of family traditions
being cheated out of much more than these
for the list is infinite in the end
of what these parents so willingly steal
for fleeting moments of Euphoria,
chasing feelings that can never be real…
and for what these parents pay for their high
it doesn’t reach the cost their children pay
but it doesn’t help to point this fact out
they refuse to listen to what you say…
In the end, all of the hope I lose
in the neglectful immature parents
I place it instead with their poor children
with all the troubles they will inherit…

I hope that they rise above their parents’ ills,
that the curse of the insatiable thirst,
misses them, and they instead shun the ways
in which their parents have become immersed.
I try to pray for it in confidence,
knowing what the poor alternatives are.
I do what I can to reach through their fog,
but too often they have drifted too far…

  © Jeremy L. Heath, 2025. All rights reserved.