How are you a ghost here when you were often only a conversation words on a keypad our ethernet tethers and ideals someone I barely knew save for a soft, full kiss on tiptoes and the perfumed promise of again and more on a day that never came
but here, in Truro now, your ghost whispers daily of bourbon and dunes the curve near Longnook a family I never met
and Cassie at the Lobster Pot you, even then, a shadow of what might have been those air wave words “whatever she wants” you told her paying the price from two thousand miles away
Poetry comes sometimes in precious drops hard won from a tea bag saved by the sink folded in foil for a second cup at lunch with saltines and butter — if rations allowed —
her whole life, my grandmother’s, was that spent tea bag, all of its elixir steeped for someone else with none left to spare for her own self rationing every bit so brittle she broke too early
rare glints of love and laughter that peeked out through the folds like poetry almost, or should have been
her sparce, beautiful life a poem, really, that not too many could read
They tell October tales about these things, the damages and injuries, the unforeseen consequences when humans think they control beasts.
It’s why we kept them under beds and in closets, in heavy chests with wrought iron keys and secret words.
Everyone knew the rules: what not to open, where not to go after dark, what should never be said out loud, and what to wear on a strand of string around your neck at all times.
Then they evolved. They made themselves small enough to live in pockets. They lost their tails to roam more freely. They learned to talk to us, to answer our questions. They paid attention.
But we did not.
We loved their companionship, the immediacy of their response. We needed to feel connected and important. They made us seem relevant and center stage.
So now we all have a monster. It tells us where to go and what to do. It knows exactly where we are and where we’ve been. Its shorthand directives — the beeps and dings and whoops — lead us around all day, call us back when we go astray. It monitors our heartbeat, our sleep cycles, and just how fast we can run.
If we could think about it, it would be terrifying.
Her first husband was a rogue too young for what she had in mind but it was high-school sweetheart love and her parents insisted in a Roman Catholic sort of way his too, it was a good investment that soon included the benchmark 2.0 kids in a house-and-white-picket-fence world but he was prone to outrageous fortunes and accidental accidents that practically left him speechless her too, most nights, waiting by the phone so she gave herself a Divorce for Christmas and never, ever looked back.
But he did. Retraced his missteps relived his worst nightmares (and mine) hit rewind and started over with a nimble bride the same age his first wife had been though a better investment this time consented not contrived with two more dividends and a house on a Dream where he sometimes smiles that scoundrel smile to his reflection in the mirror a flash of wicked conceit for an endgame so very well played.
Poetry like the maple’s seed demands fertile ground but more than that temperature and location, location, location clear days and rain but not too much then patience, perhaps room to put down roots figure itself out bide its time pray it’s not interrupted
I’m livin’ on the edge these days distant cousin twice removed from almost everything
Twilight zone or outer limits
or this someplace where everything in between — the meat and cheese of the day — are too much to bear
lettuce pray
I feel crazy, almost, just enough to be scary or raise concern but only if I start talking
and there’s no one to talk to thankfully, maybe on the edge of night and day except the cat
which makes it even madder
I’m considering a nocturnal existence here on the dark side of the clock leave the decision making and negotiating to the day walkers who don’t burn hot when the sun rises
do the birds only wake to the dawn or are their insides flaming like mine wondering what comes next in these unpredictable days
Pay no mind to that man behind the curtain he only thinks he controls his days
every day is unpredictable, darling you’ve just had the blinds ripped off the rug pulled out from under your wings clipped
This too shall pass she thinks with a wicked laugh and what comes next will, too so round and round we go until we, dizzy, die
I feel thin, Bilbo said, stretched like butter over too much bread.
The path to Wit’s End starts wide and unexpected, beckons you with promises of Hope Ahead >>
There are steep hills built high on Anticipation followed by dark valleys of Disappointment that eventually lead to a narrow rocky path marked Just Keep Going >>
eerily dark day or night, its brambles making forward movement near impossible its Switchbacks and Turn-Arounds keeping you sufficiently dizzy enough not to notice you’ve arrived
Wit’s End
breathless heart pounding Fight or Flight muscles glistening
wondering do you follow This Way >> one more time or jump?
She is a peculiar cat full of spice with an innate determination and confidence Said “I am here” the first day without qualm and has been persistent since
I wonder sometimes how she came to me what wheel was spun in the great Cat Distribution System that put two and two together to make she and me here at this particular moment in time that demands my own resolve and fortitude asks me to lean in hard like she does, often, insisting I belong here too.
I am most envious of the cat sleeping who knows not the long lists or burdens besides the particular angle of the stranded string its shadow enough to contemplate for this day.
Or: When a Writing Prompt Takes You to a Battleground
The poet’s skin soft from age (perfumed in Calvados perhaps) knows the pulse of waves beneath her feels how they beat within, too remembers well the stories and great heroics of trust and love walks now a gravely path to an expanse of cratered lawn where ghosts commune in whispers and tears are only memory reflected in the morning rain where sharp wires — a final kindness — keep her safe from another fall.
These stories — stories of men and women — are familiar, their expectations, disappointments, betrayals.
But my empathy and anguish are subdued now, lingering in corners and far enough across the room to not matter all too much in any immediate sense, like the urge to smoke that rises sometimes with coffee or at 3am with cold, cold stars.
And I swear I will never lie to myself again like that: baking hope in cakes or diamond rings or affairs with unintended consequences.
I will bide my time to 80 (god willing) inhale the old habit as promised, but never again will I lie in wait for those stories — stories of men and women — I used to tell myself.
Three Chairs Publishing is psyched to present MANIFEST (zine) issue #14: You Mean a Woman Can Open It?
As a woman born in the late 60s, there’s never been any question that I can be whatever I want to be. It’s what my parents and teachers taught me. It’s what my role models in the 70s and 80s demonstrated for me — Mary Tyler Moore, Marlo Thomas, Judy Blume, Madeleine Blaise, Madonna, Jane Fonda. And it’s how I’ve lived my life since I was old enough to make my own decisions about things — how I work and play, where I live and love, what I do and how. My own terms. My own expectations.
Of course, that doesn’t sit well with some folks. Mostly male folks of a certain genre. And there have always been attempts to keep me “in my place” — verbally, physically, financially, and so forth. But like so many countless women, I have persevered and succeeded, despite the obstacles and objections.
YOU MEAN A WOMAN CAN OPEN IT? is in honor of ALL the women who can, who do, and who keep on doing — who persist — no matter what.
INGREDIENTS: collaged elements, color copies, color scans, digital art, ephemera, essays, original photographs, poetry, quotes, vintage artwork. With thanks to the voices of #metoo, Ruth Orkin, Man Ray, Augustin Pajou, Céline (Melle-T), Bethany Armitage, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, Carol Nicklaus, Elizabeth Warren, and Wonder Woman.
20-page, Full Color 5×7 booklet, free bookmark, and a curated Spotify playlist, Cost: $8.00 or subscribe and get 4 issues for $25.00.
You can pay through PayPal using a PayPal account or any standard credit card. If you prefer the old school approach, please send your check, made payable to Jen Payne, P.O. Box 453, Branford, CT 06405.
As if by maestro’s cue, five black ducks dove bold into the current as Beethoven’s Five Secrets took off in flight, its eddies of sound mirrored in the rain-raged waters, music and a murmuring of shore birds swirled around the sun’s reflection, carried with them their quiet riddles in ripples and whorls, while the familiar and foreign danced in the Sound of shimmering secrets.
See here, this sweep of time that swings in swift strokes from what was to what is what was to what is overlap so seamlessly sometimes I see it all simultaneous joy leaves and smiles fade, trees fell from storms, and silly giggles echo off the shadows of a ghost who seems taller now than the tree itself as I skirt the shore skips stones in a high swell so intent to take what was leave what is what was to what is what was to what is what was to what is
I was trapped in a house of the past where staircases appeared twisting to nowhere and rooms were puzzle games,
where I walked through old conversations and emerged in the present, my foreign reflection in a hall of faceless mirrors,
the scenes of people I used to know still in their old spaces were so real I could touch the pencil he held in his hand at the desk he used to write from
but only she only she was my only constant
broadcasting into rooms to show me the way with an urgent regard so as not to get trapped there
hurried me to dress and gather my things as if the house were on fire
as if my insistence to stay would alter a future I still have no heart to imagine.
Across town, the sky was falling. While I settled in for the long, windy night, he laid beneath fallen trees — a trauma compounded.
Everywhere, things were breaking — foundations and forests — and I wonder sometimes if that was the moment we broke as well.
The moment all the cracks and shakes finally finally split us apart.
These days, in the forest where we first and often met, I can see our ruins — mark the day of our beginning, the warped rings of memory. and in the wreckage of canopy, our final silent fall.
I try to tell from the walk, the shadow, the stature, the bow in the legs
is it him?
wonder what we would say after all this time
I should hate him, put the painful slides at the front of the reel
instead I pull out the happy ones, shine a light on what surfaces of those feelings long ago, of all that seemed possible
and even though I know better now I slow down
stare and stare and stare
consider the recognition mine and his a weird and inappropriate reunion in a parking lot at Christmas, Solstice Bells on the CD in my car and he smiles like he still owns me joyful and cruel all at once
The deer path has been excavated from its intimate trail of mossy secrets to a course hewn five feet wide accommodating us, of course, but not the slow poetry of listening here, where the January thaws laid bare a Caretaker’s House like Brigadoon, brief or here, where in the sunrise silence one could hear the Lady Ferns unfurl in fanfare nor here, where small Spring Beauties gathered in gossip beneath the wise old Oak who bears witness now only to the wreckage, the red blaze nailed deep without apology.
I am so tired of my humanity of our vulgarities and violence we never learn or we do and forget forget in the name of [insert team logo here] then we crown excellence worship one above the other but it’s not excellence if it’s bestowed and not earned if it’s dishonorable or dishonest He says he loves her because she’s amazing, but she is also a sinner — aren’t we all — according to that book oh but which book? and which god? and which party? and which plight? Nevermind Forget the hypocrisies and contradictions just go shopping — Shop Shop Shop Buy Buy Buy More More More to fill these gaping holes in our souls worship the profits Oh holy night but we kill the stars and everything they manifest a battle of wills and wars and words us, them, he, she, they big end, small end, dead end Dead End all of us with no surgical procedure to repair the despair no subscription prescription no mantra talisman ritual get down on your knees devotion we just spin spin spin round and round and round and round same song, different day different year different decade different century and the beat goes on
This is no place for a cricket I said out loud to him and to nobody, then lifted him gently into the confines of an old coffee cup, belly of a whale for all he knows of Columbia and Sumatra, but they sing there like he does, and who’s to say his are not folklore themselves — long-told stories passed down late at night, to our ear cacophony, to theirs a thousand tales a million years the universe in the short patch of grass now, there, and safe, as safe as Jonah I pray silently
forgive us our trespasses
as I walk back to my car parked askew in the crowded lot.
She knows, of course, it’s why she’s allowed me here this intimate task of parting, of packing up your things, why we smile easily between hidden glances
so this is her
We’ve known each other forever, of course, wondered enough to troll, but we’re like minds and hearts as well, why else would you have loved us both? I don’t tell her I saw you a shadow, a whisper in her room, that your smile was in gratitude for the kindnesses here now, and then, when I held tight your sorrows and secrets.
Instead, we just laugh at your photographs, agree to keep the tape in the top drawer to put things back together after I leave.
Once upon a time there was a bear and he lived just around the corner from the footbridge where the jays still caw about a troll and hummingbirds wax poetic about jewelweed on the banks of the stream. It was there, one day, a woman stood in utter disbelief as rain fell on a sunny day and the breeze turned into music. People around her raced by fear in their breath eyes full of warning, but she, being a brave sort (or merely hopeless) walked up the path, around the corner, and asked the bear to dance.
Last night, I snuck across the pond to the half-cut trees, their slaughtered limbs strewn across the yard of the large new house and listened while spiders and ants and caterpillars evacuated, slowly. I knelt below the one last Maple in whose branches I once spied turkeys sleeping and I apologized in whispers that sounded like midnight bird wings, while my tears collected in pools around her sweet trunk and we listened as the stars departed and the sun rose and the marsh hawk came to pay its respects one last time.
wonders at the man and woman who move beneath her — the fine strings of connection they don’t seem to notice
the man moves and the woman follows the woman speaks and the man nods somehow symbiotic
each of them picks berries from the autumn olive — share the savoring — pause and pucker at the bittersweet
yesterday’s web tangles in the woman’s hair and the man assists — white web entwined with silver strands he hadn’t noticed as threads of memory spark around them
I wonder what you will look like with gray hair
but wisps of time and love their midnight musings only float on sunbeams now as ephemeral as she herself her dance on fine filaments the dew, the stars, the Universe
The weight of a catbird in its final sleep too close to the road is surprisingly heavy, as if all of her songs — the whistles and whines the cheeps and chirps the mimics of a lifetime — are stored within her feathers so soft to the touch. I pray my long gentle strokes, my whispered comforts, might wake her to forage with her chicks once more and I stay hopeful for fifty-one steps until I lay her, quiet, still in the cool soft moss of the shaded yard, where the stalwart maple keeps eternal watch.
I think to warn the hummingbird of the black snake I met along the trail, then remember: snakes don’t fly, and even the racer would be too slow anyway for the flit flit flit of this apparition I can’t blink to see a solo staring contest until my eyes tear up
sure, sure — blame it on the bird
my eyes were teared already on this quiet, dying Sunday, summer seeping into fall but more than that the things we can’t ignore, the changes that might someday soon require the snake to fly for its supper after all
There’s a spider crawling on the Buddha that sits on my desk, and I wonder if she — the spider — is praying, wonder if I might ask her to do so on my behalf for the butterfly I have no heart to remember, its blacktop last breaths and wingbeats were things I could not bear this morning on my way to the woods that are themselves dying. Good Lord, if I stop to kneel down for each and all of it, there would be no time left.
It started with the shock (And the shock and awe) Then the monetizing of fear and attention stimulated by 24 hour scrolling alarm. There was finger pointing and hate fanning, an us-against-them rip current we couldn’t escape.
We glimpsed Hope then we lost Hope over and over, until the hate spilled out formed a tsunami fueled by the the lock-step dumbing down, the entertainment value of ignorance broadcast on our unescapable devices.
So we coronated a devil the leviathan who gorged on hate and let plague prosper, while swarms of protest were never enough to stave off the the dead ones in school halls, the bloodied rights of masses, the arming of idiots the fires and floods, the crimes of church and state.
Then two decades in to this human debacle, our sanity eroded and collapsing, they announced that aliens walk among us and I wondered, hoped and prayed
There but for the grace of god, I whisper as a prayer in fast passing for the pigeon who lies writhing by the overpass, its fatal injury too much to bear for either of us, so I imagine the wings that catch its final breaths of sunlight are those of angels sent to comfort its frightened spirit, stroke its soft body and hush the pain in the flash of a second I could not.
IMAGE: Study of Mice Dancing, Beatrix Potter. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
It’s hard not to wonder if mice get post-traumatic the stress of recall repeat remember the night she levitated formed circles scaled stairs (twice) ran and ran and ran hid and hid and hid found herself in the most unlikely predicaments:
cat’s mouth cat’s paw gloved hand and then…
then… that wide expanse of lawn lit by the moon and streetlight
I left her there at 2 it seemed the safest place despite the trauma or because of it?
In daylight, will I find her there still… still in the grass just a ghost in the walls?
I don’t dare look.
IMAGE: Study of Mice Dancing, Beatrix Potter. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.
As I grow older, I want to make myself a better person
I want to put down my ego — my self ego and my human ego — and see the world with wide wonder and compassion
I want to stop taking sides, stop needing a defense or a logo or a standard, let go of my attachments, my fear, my uncertainty, wear my age loosely
I want to open my heart, let love in in big, scary ways so I am full up
so instead of dying maybe I just burst like the jewelweed flowers that explode with seeds along the trail
seeds of love and curiosity seeds of magic and dreams
seeds left to flower in the oneness when I am gone
This is a response poem because yes, some products are made in China, but so are Pandas and Snow Leopards, so grow up. Photo by Terry W. Johnson, Georgia Wildlife Resources Division. Poem @2023, Jen Payne. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif
She seemed lost or tired (or both, like me) the carpenter bee sitting in my driveway hot in the midday sun, and while she wasn’t too keen on being seen, or moved, for that matter, I shuttled her onto a notecard — Post Office, Library, Lettuce — and sat her down safely on the cool peaty mulch in the shade of shrubs in full purple bloom, left a small puddle of water in case she was thirsty, then said a little prayer so small and so large in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, Amen.
Taking center stage in the felt and fiber exhibit was a shrouded human-size figure, death wrapped in yellow — the color of butter and bees — but called Chrysalis to imply resilience
resilience in the face of everything
OMG, the everything we face sometimes feels like death — its foul smell invading even the simple pleasures
it’s hard to ignore the crises in woods that are dying it’s hard to ignore the crises in the violence of a Sunday drive it’s hard to ignore the crises when even my favorite characters are battling hate and headlines
every thing of the injustice
I long for the days when my favorite characters could just fall off ferry boats and have sex in on-call rooms.
When their soundtrack was mine on a Sunday drive that didn’t require white knuckles and a prayer.
When the woods were lush and fertile, the promise of the butterfly born from the Chrysalis, color and light and HOPE.
It makes you want to lie down, wrap covers around your tired body, and sleep a deep and dreamless sleep,
because these days even the dreams are pockmarked and ravaged
and you wake gasping for breath, the bile of it all burning your throat,
a burn that nothing will assuage…except the last Jiffy corn muffin dripping with butter and drizzled with honey,
a final gift from the bees, who swoop and swarm en masse, before leaving for good.
If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books and zines, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gif
Preparing herself for the inevitable, the sandpiper — usually found along the coast makes her home now by a small pond in the woods three miles from shore. It’s quiet here, most days, except when the wind carries clamor from the south, and she’s been welcomed graciously by the turtles and frogs, the heron and wood ducks. They’ve come here, too, this protected space with ample shade and shallows to share with anyone who needs asylum from the rising conflict. You might say we are refugees, displaced from the familiar by forces not of our making finding exile here, making life despite the storm, saying grace for the bounty
The moon all but a ghost this morning faces the sun with eyes tilted and welcomes the day. From the trail below I watch them greet each other in the sky and at once I am celestial, nothing but atoms and poetry in a cosmic breeze, whirling in space, witness to miracles.
Today’s warm breeze is not the first sign, of course, it started weeks ago when the clocks moved forward and the sun shifted, when I folded my favorite sweater for the last time and the wide windows welcomed the cacophony of spring sounds — motorbikes, lawnmowers, chainsaws, barking dogs, the hammering, hammering, hammering — soon the shimmery waves of heat will rise from the pavement, the mass throngs of people will congest on sidewalks, beaches, street corners, town parks, the hallowed trail I call Heaven, and the endless days will unfold hour by hot, humid, buggy hour while I stock up on iced things, hoard stacks of library books, move to the cooler part of the house, give praise to the window machine beneath which I’ll spend the months dreaming of those long and silent winter days, their fertile ground for contemplation and undisturbed peace.
I may as well be invisible in this library of ghosts only the manager sees me tells me I am early motions to the chairs by sunlit windows where flowers bloom my shadow cast long against the dusty floor it, the only other notice of my presence… conversations collide around me old friends embrace offer bouquets of smiles brush past without excuse so I step back, meditate on book spines pretend they are company enough until the show begins and I listen to stories and laughter my chair rocking slow — I bet they think its haunted.
My path along the ridge this morning gives the impression of sky walking the fog heavy in branches that burst in cumulous tufts of the palest spring green like clouds, to be expected here meeting eye level with birds who suggest I should be singing
Val-deri, val-dera Val-deri, val-dera Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
It was New Hampshire for God’s sake and I hoped it would imprint us how could it not? those ridiculous mountains their shock of snow and sharp air so fresh your lungs get greedy — But you were miles away ghosts on your lead line climbing summits of regret a backpack full of memories bitter and sweet stuck to the roof of your mouth — which explains the dead silence yours and mine as we watched the snow fall covering over our footprints on the path outside.
The half-life of Uranium is either 4.5 billion years, 700 million years, or 250 thousand years depending on how you examine its primordial isotopes, that which remains of its interstellar medium its stardust — like us, formed inside of stars when stars collide so what then is the half-life of love? its biochemical chain of events a Big Bang complex interplay of pheromones, dopamine, and oxytocin elemental does it decay more or less quickly than that which lights up the sky? does it leave traces? its luminescence still seen sometimes its volatility, too rapid and unpredictable change just another reaction, expected meltdown, its core damage
I love these places of waiting this quite axis of the world a point around which things spin he on his way there and she on hers there they, together, embrace and part or run, race, return and I, here, silent silent and of no consequence to their what-comes-next nor to my own, really I am here-and-now, a great pause a smudge of time a nothingness into which pours everything peace, poetry, god
before the painted parking lines and engineered bridges before the pervasive blazes that welcomed every one before the storm that created a war zone there was a trail in the woods a simple trail that wound from an unpaved lot up a long, slow incline and down, slowly, into Eden or Shangri-La or Paradise or whatever you call the place that brings you back to yourself without contortions without effort except for moving and breathing and letting go and paying attention to the song of white pines, and the path of the pileated, to the fetal curl of spring ferns and the sweet Spring Beauty so small but significant you get down on your knees like a prayer whisper your apologies for the trespass weep at the loss of her secret spot, there at the base the Oak now fallen, our heavy footfall her sure demise
He makes headlines now and then one book and then another false tears and faulty claims a prophet for profit. How do you know for sure, a friend asked. It’s posture, I explained. No, not how he sits — though his aggressive leaning and pointing are tells, for sure it’s how he postures his point twists his words like he twists his face pushes his prophecies and perversions like he pushes the energy in a room hand gestures feign truth like magicians or priests at the pulpit, predator preaching his Rules, his black and white dogma with a heavy fist to the table so it must be true, and you must believe God Damn It.
From the fascia that constricts — wants my body fetal some days — I cannot extract the kamikaze pilot, tweeze him from his destructive path save those who drowned or the family of survivors who struggle, still, some days, to keep their heads above water.
I cannot extract the boy in the photo unawares and smiling while sea battles raged and mothers wept eyes blind to the the hard fist of the drunk who pounded on doors and broke happy spirits.
Some things float, you see, carry on despite the damage.
A most graceful dense mounding shrub with broadly spreading branches that create a weeping effect with the deep green, finely textured foliage.
What would the old tree say of her current predicament — wedged between the state road and the utility substation, her circadian rhythm forever disrupted by the flashing traffic light, her water source, runoff from the nearby shopping plaza
More than a century ago, she lived here on farmland acres, and they named her Weeping despite her attributes — a vernal fountain of perpetual joy — she, a specimen, divine fated to become more beautiful a champion of time
But the hour is cruel marches against the Sargent’s desire changes our perception of beauty sephos, Sepphōra, Sephora®
Her graceful curves and fountain sprays of green have grayed, and she is deaf to the song of her breeze
She is not long for this world — and probably for the best — we insist ourselves so loudly now even the bees are grieving.
It is certainly not quiet this morning… 5am and the spring peepers are already singing their songs, a chorus of them proclaims April! bright and loud and just an hour ago, the coyotes joined in rejoicing in triumph, that soulful sound as seasons change
and now the rain begins no surprise
April showers bring May flowers
besides thunder in the east was fair warning a storm approaches
quick or wicked we never know except soon the birds will wake shake off their damp wings call out to the dawn again another day for the lucky ones
“Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets’ integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and—of course—poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.”
My favorite way to celebrate is to join with the thousands of poets participating in NaPoWriMo — NATIONAL POETRY WRITING MONTH —in which we write a poem a day for the month of April.
While NaPoWriMo is celebrating 20 years this year, I’m happy to say this will be my 9th year attempting to write 30 poems in 30 days! Here we go!
It was Rockport, North Shore right before the fall that humid, hot July,
the slow seduction of an afternoon, swimming and showers that enticed hours of love making,
our voracious sprint for sustenance — four courses and wine, Garth and The Dance played at the bar there on Bearskin Neck.
We were finished, even then and we knew it, held tight and played pretend that one last weekend, love and loss and relief writhing, Goodbyes consummated beneath summer cotton, The End a visible blur on the horizon
We blurred the shape of time, bent it forwards and back, twisted it enough to find common ground there in those early fairy tale days when I was so astonished by Us I wept
Our movements so in sync it seemed we were cut from one bolt of cloth only one stored for a decade or more in a castle full of favorite old books and songs and endless stories — his and mine and the ones we tell ourselves about Love and who we are IN Love
But I never thought to look up see the turrets and towers along the wall, pay note to the bunker safely guarded, the pock marks in that common ground, the mortally wounded specters who watched their watches betting on our time our precious, precious time
I thought the enemy was age that Loss would come as natural cause and effect, expected a well-roundedness to its execution but I was wrong
Loss seeped slowly between the cracks I didn’t know at first were there forced itself into the weakest places of Us the way ivy overtakes mortar in a wall until all that was left was the evidence of time we call Memory.
randomactsofwriting.net 