Poetry can be boring.
But every once in a while
A poem cuts right through the fog
Grips your collar
Forces you to pay attention.
A good poem
Runs through you like a trickle of ice water.
A good poem
Is fleet and cannot be caught.
A good poem
Creeps quiet like ivy
Until it coats the inside of your mind
And you are besotted.
A good poem
Leaves a mark where it touched you
Red like a new bruise
Red like a lipstick kiss
When I was a child
Time and I were friends.
We used to sit together
Enjoying the sunset through the trees
Spending evenings after dark watching fireflies
Just feeling the cool air nip at our fingertips.
But time and I had a falling out.
I stopped communing with her. I started making demands.
I told her what to do, what needed to be done. She was never enough for me.
She fled
As time is wont to do
I chased her too hard
But time cannot be tamed
She must be approached with respect.
When you calm down
She’ll come back and join you.
But only if you give her a place to sit.
So I started to draw this cartoon about the fire drill at work, and the way nobody gave a damn. But I made a bad mistake on one of the people, overcorrected, finally gave up, rolled with the mistakes, and made it a full-on wookiee.
Of course this was wildly distracting and since the paper is pink, I can’t white it out. I’m too lazy to redraw the image or photoshop it out. I thought it would be a funny, lazy fix if I just cut it out.
Somehow this made the whole cartoon a lot darker, especially when you look at my desk as a whole. Suddenly it’s a commentary on isolation and depression. I’m generally a pretty upbeat gal, but my dark sense of humor always ends up taking my work to horrible places.
Poor lonely mistake of a wookiee. It got ignored and went away… but where can it go, really? Its whole world is that one piece of paper; even if it tries to leave the paper, it’s still a part of it. Heh.
Watching Kato kitty be sick is difficult
I sort of understand his pain
It’s not like raging menstrual cramps are the same as recovering from surgery
But I know what it is to feel like shit
For hours
When all you can do is whimper
And you’re too miserable to keep fluids or meds down
And your world is just pain, and nausea, and the hope that it’ll be over
I know what that is
I also know
What it is to be alienated
To walk around with a little touch of a serial killer inside you
To watch people cry
And feel like some kind of unbreakable spirit
But ten layers down you ache to know that release
Respect and envy their vulnerability
And wonder what it is
To be human
We are made by what we used to be
I have been given this compassion
I am grateful
To have been there
And to be back
Even if it’s just
So I can give a cat sympathetic pets
When my mom died
One person broke through to me
One
She listened
She asked questions
But most important
She did not pity
And because she regarded me as one with strength
I was able to be weak in front of her
Because she had watched her father die
She had that perfect compassion
The kind that really means something
I hope to be
Flash fiction again.
The Man with the Flat Cap
She sat looking out the cafe window at the cold white Christmas lights and tried to remember who she was. Her husband gone. All alone.
Her coffee was cold. She didn’t care. She sat and stared at the lights, longing to be one of them, to not feel anymore.
Something passed in front of them, obliterating her view in dark shadow.
Fuck it.
She got up and paid, leaving her coffee on the table.
She walked to her car when a chill swept under her skin, colder than the cutting winter wind. She turned and saw a man with a flat cap silhouetted, a dark shadow against the lights.
Although she couldn’t be sure, he seemed to be following her. She shuddered and walked faster.
Straining to hear his footsteps behind her, to keep track of how close he was, she hurried to her car. With trembling hands she unlocked the door and climbed in. Slamming the door shut and locking it, she peered out, but the man was gone.
She felt silly. But glad to be safe.
Why didn’t she hear his footsteps?
Shaken, she pulled her gloves out of her pocket, dropped one on the floor under her seat, reached for it.
In the dim glow of the lights, she saw something else under the seat.
Her husband’s flat cap.
She realized that terror she’d felt was the first time in a month she’d been glad to be alive.
She chuckled at his sense of humor. He was always one for pranks. And she didn’t feel so alone anymore.
Something metallic lightly tapped her window.
She glanced up and into the face of the man who had been following her. He was grinning at her, all brown mangled teeth, and tapping on her window with a knife.
She screamed, started the car, and veered away, leaving the man in the street, laughing hysterically under the cold white lights.
Sarah D. Silvey 