"Each hurt swallowed is a stone." Rita Dove
By the end of last year
I had vomited up all the
stones
and piled them on the garden wall.
Except one.
interpersonal relationships
DEATH
I was afraid of revealing me, the essence of me. Who even, indeed, was I? My mother told me, when I started dating, to hide the essence of me, boys wouldn’t like it. Too smart; too aggressive; too full of myself; too intense; too serious; too burning inside strong; too adventuresome; too nasty a temper; too full of desire to feel, taste, see, learn; too much in love with a world of possibility. I took her advice, married a genius scientist, safe, timid, disadventurous. He liked me because I could shoot a bird off a wire hundreds of feet away. I time, we all died, him, me, the bird.
This piece was a finalist in a flash memoir contest.
Marriage
The following poem was chosen to be published in the Story Circle Network’s annual Anthology this past autumn. I submitted two flash memoir pieces, including the Spiders story on a previous post, as well as this poem. I was very surprised that this was the one chosen.
Marriage
I remember the time he touched my face, melting me.
I married him; my face slowly, inexorably froze.
