Intention

I knew a woman
who used to say
certain things
often,
on a loop,
a broken record reminding
that the road to hell was paved
with good intentions,
but she was always dramatic like that.

I never could quite get on board
with her general reasoning
about the boat on water’s likelihood to sink,
the glass of fresh milk being half empty,
the danger of putting all one’s eggs
into one basket
and having them crack.

But over the years I realized that
her perspective was no act.
Life had happened to her
and daily living had, indeed,
grown into a hell
where she believed
her boat was always sincerely sinking,
where she had a permanent intolerance to milk
(and it was sour by now anyway),
where she had accidentally ruined
one of her most precious eggs
with best intentions.

Still, even in knowing better,
I found her incessant negativity,
antagonism and anger
as difficult to tolerate as ever.
Perhaps even more so
because I don’t like
watching someone suffer needlessly
and being unable to do anything about it.
(Also because I loved her,
and I knew that she was good.)

Nevertheless, neither I
nor God
nor the Devil himself
was going to convince her to move
from her now permanent address
situated squarely
in a leaky boathouse
on the swampy fifth ring
of the river Styx.

No, not even I could convince her to move:
Fellow fallen angels
her only chosen neighbors,
an outcome she clung to
like an intention.