Placed you up,
out of reach,
where you could be loved
like an object.
Perfect.
Worshipped
your tears and howls,
as you begged
for freedom.
Tag / life
Gone For Coffee #DverseQuadrille
Instead of speaking
she breathes
across the skin of her coffee.
Whispers,
the words unwanted
to an empty chair across
and closes her eyes,
sips her drink,
when nothing is said
in return
and blots a last goodbye
on a napkin
from the counter.
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Returning Home For A Spell
My father had a VCR tape of One Man and His Dog that we could never get to play properly. It’s probably still in the bottom of the cupboard, with the Disney films and MotoGPs that never quite make it across the living room anymore. Some people have got rid of their VCR players these days. There’s nowhere else for them to go but the bottom of a plastic bin so they stay in the dark with the dust and the spiders. That is the way things move on.
In October I re-learnt how to be by myself. Sort of. Just me and the dog, and the crunch of autumn on farm tracks. Even the walkers seemed to be absent or perhaps I had fallen out of step with the world. Found the time of day when no one ventured further than their front-door or garden gate. I’d found a time when all of it, all of the emptiness was mine for a while. So I let it swallow me, completely, for as long as a thing can last.
Brambles like barbed wire
snarl up the barren verges,
and pheasant breaks loose.
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An Ever-Changing Beast
‘We should really address the elephant in the room.’
Those were the words you tossed out over coffee,
like spare change or old candy wrappers,
bits of pieces you were bored with carrying around
and deposited on my living room table
between the books and the plant pots.
There didn’t seem to be much point explaining,
your elephant wasn’t in this room,
or hadn’t been until you kicked up dust clouds
into a grey silhouettes.
I kept my silence on the matter,
much like you had kept yours until now,
too cautious about the fall out,
about how you might have to hold me together
when all the pieces broke apart
and ran for the corners in the skirting,
white mice abandoning ship
at the first sign of storms.
I let you think you were the only one
holding out a hand,
while you explained why I was sad
and how it could all be fixed
if I tired hard enough
and put in the work.
You can learn how to listen to the some speeches
without really hearing them.
It’s the same trick you used each time I tried
to put shadows into sentences,
when the doors opened enough
that I could see you were there.
So I nodded
and I pretended
that all this helped me some,
and then I let you leave smiling like a hero
while I went back to face the storms.
Written as a response to Diana W Peach’s speculative fiction prompt. I was going to write a piece of flash fiction for the prompt of a short story, but this poem so of found its way out instead.
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Good Ideas – #DVersePoets Quadrille Night
Good ideas never really come all at once.
Your lightbulb moment
is more like the switch on a kettle
pinging to off when the water finally comes
to a full boil.
The stillness can be mistaken for suddenness,
but clarity
takes longer to steep.
Carol J Forrester 
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