A shroud over muddy water shields my eyes from bright intrusion. Reminisce in the rain; that dead crow in the driveway. I thought the antiquated card of death meant a new beginning but is more a macabre or a malo animo. Will I see you in my dreams? Shall we kiss farewell a thousand days? Your clothes are in the closet and in the dresser drawers. Your pillow is still crumpled where we entwined in cosmic rays. Your towel in the shower is still damp. An angel from someplace alit and gathered all the treasure and left behind red lips as a kiss to compensate. I hesitate to sleep and wake up once again, to open eyes and comprehend Poe’s slick black nevermore.
About the Creator
Pamela Williams
“Suppose I had wings like the dawning day and flew across the ocean. Even then your powerful arm would guide and protect me.”
— Psalm 139:9–10, Contemporary English Version (CEV)
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More stories from Pamela Williams and writers in Poets and other communities.
Faith
Ladybird, black spots on crimson red in the grass she crawls. By contemplating time and the space in which she lives, her future appears to me by denudation; I see obstacles in her way, dangers she will face. Should I permit her freedom to choose her way, even if she chooses the way of hardship and a spider’s web? I attempt to warn and guide her by closing doors with twigs and mud, but blood seeps from her knees as I become the anathema. So I retreat to let her lose or win, and in the grass she crawls away as blood seeps from my knees. God, let her win.
By Pamela Williams4 years ago in Poets
Foot Bindings
I asked my grandmother how she knew she'd fallen in love. I am not sure I ever did love him, she said. This was before I met my husband. I was naive, a naked spring, a raw nerve of a thing. That cannot ever be me, I knew. Sadness swept in gently like a Moscow thaw. It is no simple thing, looking into a woman's vast soul and seeing its foot bindings. Now, in Italy divorced with my skin singed off, when I say I don't love him mean: I have succeeded at feeling nothing most days and it mostly works. Do you want the comfort of Nothing? Do you want Nothing, too? Be warned: you'll never be free, even when you are nothing. Here is what doesn't work: Accepting the stages of grief. Talking about it. Sitting with the feeling. Missing him—no, the person you were when you believed in death do us part. Writing poetry. That, too. When I say I don't love him I mean: I feel capsized in an endless, starved tide. What sometimes works: selective memory. You must forget ripe tomatoes and his beard and feeling perfectly sheltered in a big blue world. Forget coffee in bed, laughter watching TV, blowing out the candles on the birthday cake and the quiet all-encompassing knowledge that you are chosen. Remember only how love turned to a banal everyday survival act, a trapeze act unsure whether he will catch you, how the warmth stagnated and became sour, remember the foot bindings and remember the resentment boiling in your veins as you stick it out for the kids. Six-hour Netflix binges help, too. A man's fingers tracing your spine. Frozen pizza at 2 a.m. Random trips to the museum just to stand near things that last a while. The realization that crying won’t change anything. Seeing that life is just a dream, and refusing to participate in your own suffering. Bite your fist. Walk on eggshells around joy. When I say I don't love him, I mean he didn’t break my heart, he just stopped touching it and it forgot how to beat right.
By Ella Bogdanovaabout 12 hours ago in Poets
Brainwashing, Soul Food, and Torches of Freedom: Eat More to be More
Eat More Bacon Now Smoke More Cigarettes Now Eat More To be More (“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” -Edward Bernays, the Jew who Hitlter tried to hire.. . . )
By SAMURAI SAM AND WILD DRAGONS4 days ago in Poets
Stories Before a Wedding, or The Happily Ever After of Cinderella
Cinderella had always dreamt of marrying a prince. She had dreamt of nothing else since she was a small girl. Now, however, as the Prince’s wife of three days, she had to admit that the reality was not as she had dreamt it to be.
By Dionearia Red4 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
"Your pillow is still crumpled where we entwined in cosmic rays. Your towel in the shower is still damp. An angel from someplace alit and gathered all the treasure and left behind red lips as a kiss to compensate." Wow. I adore these lines. Your word choices here are sublime, especially "alit" which really paints an entire story on its own. To imagine an angel coming down just to leave behind trails of its existence and its absence is so so rich with sadness and awe-inspiring beauty too. This is one of the best heartbreak pieces I've read.