Three Portraits of Man, Thomas McKendry (September 2026)
Three Portraits of Man
I–Judas
It started on a Tuesday after work.
Not much, but more than nothing. He’d been fine
and when examined said they both were happy.
But things had started breaking at the time,
small tremors, hairline fractures, silent days
that turned to silent nights that turned to weeks,
all covered with a gloss of pleasantries.
A life that hardly merited complaint,
or so he told himself each passing month
which made his hell of heaven so much worse.
The brunette millstone hanging round his neck,
the office secret everybody knows
that makes him an adulterer by nights
when “work has kept me late again” cannot
begin to hold the kind of love he holds
for her, the one for whom he weaves this crown
of thorns she doesn’t know that she will wear
six months from now when all will be revealed
by one loud shot, a cold scream and a note.
For now, it only creeps up like a whisper,
when staring at himself in bathroom mirrors
and wondering how it ever came to this.
It hadn’t seemed that shady at the time.
A single digit’s difference was all
They’d asked of him. The key stroke and his silence
that paid for last year’s holiday to France
now holds him on the wrong side of the window,
cold phone in hand and choking back the tears
while listening to his son of four years old
inquire when he’ll be coming home again.
He never had imagined seeing pain
like what he saw behind her gentle eyes
the moment that she knew what he had done.
He can’t imagine what it’s going to take
to win the trust he shattered in a day,
to hold again the heart that once was given
with all the love of youthful innocence.
He only knows that every visitation
is one day closer to that future time
when all he’ll ask is just to have the chance
to build and rebuild anything he can.
For now, all he can do is pray and weep
and make of what the present has a wealth of;
Time, that holds the future in the past.
It didn’t seem that long ago that they
had been the very image of the life
that everybody dreams of having someday;
a wedding-pictured mantelpiece, a home
with every corner swept and prayed upon.
But now the cold and heartless monotoned
heart monitor is all that keeps him company
between her brief and painful waking moments.
He’d always thought she’d still be beautiful
if she should ever lose her auburn hair;
he never dreamed that he’d be proven right.
He doesn’t know in just three hours’ time
He’ll take an Uber home because to drive
would be impossible through all the tears.
He doesn’t know he’ll wonder how this world
could hold such love and grief as he looks down
and wonders how he’ll raise a child alone.
But then he’ll see she has her mother’s eyes
and hold her as the firm conviction grows
that he will never love like this again.
For now, he stands before the wooden bed
and wishes he was hanging in her stead.
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