The Dragonfly and Raven

The Dragonfly and Raven

Saturday, April 4, 2015

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

There is a man in a gray flannel suit.
He works in  the city from nine to five,
In a plain rectangular cubicle.
He works for a corporate commission,
Taking the metro train five days a week,
To slave away on a QWERTY keyboard.

The man in the suit has a family.
He has a pretty young wife named Ilene,
Who he had been seeing since seventeen.
They were sweethearts through high school and college,
Marrying June, after graduation.
They have a small little girl named Sarah.
Sarah has her father's brown chestnut hair,
And her mother's glinting bluish-green eyes.
She has her father's curiosity,
And her mother's compassion and kindness.

The Man and his wife and daughter lived in,
The suburbs of the city were he worked.
They lived in a blue-white Levvittown house,
With a large green-grass lawn and a driveway.
The two story house has a large garage,
Were there is a gray Volkswagon Jetta.
They have a chocolate lab named Sadie,
And a calico cat named Liberty.
Here the man and his wife and daughter live.
Together they are gay, living happy.

At least, that is what an outsider sees.
They wife and daughter are happy, not he.
He lives in a constant state of sadness.
He is ill with a disease of the mind.
A terrible sickness--a depression.
For years and years he hid it well,
Continuing on for his wife and kid.
But one Tuesday it all became too much.
And so instead of going to work he
Waited for his family to leave the house.
He ducked into the garage as they left.
Grabbing some rope and a small step-ladder,
He fashioned for himself a hangman's noose,
And kicked the ladder out from under him.

They found him there a few hours later,
Swaying ever so slightly back and forth,
To the horror of his young, little girl.
A crumpled note, the only thing he left.
He said it was not their fault, it was his.
He said that he loved them but he couldn't
Continue on living in agony.
He said that this was the only way he
Thought could finally give him a respite.

For years and years Sarah was sad, angry.
She was furious with her dead father,
Thinking that he was a selfish person.
Blaming him for everything bad happening.
She stayed in this state of anger until
She was a woman of twenty seven.
Her rage destroyed all her relationships,
And drove her to a deep, deep depression.
But when she was twenty seven years old,
She finally realized she needed
To come to terms with what her father did.

So Sarah sought help with a therapist,
For the first time since that day
Sharing all of her bottled emotions.
Sarah looked deep inside of herself to grasp,
Why her father killed himself that fateful day.
And eventually she understood it,
Able to move on, forgiving the man.
Able to live outside of his shadow.
The man who once wore a gray flannel suit

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