I Swear I do
I swear I love you
(but I've lost who I am since I met you)
I swear I love you
(but I feel suffocated in this house we call home)
I swear I love you
(but the space you take up in my heart gets smaller each day)
I swear I love you
(but I forget what passion feels like and it used to be like breathing)
I swear I meant it when I said "I do"
I meant every word of our vows
We were everything
But since saying them my identity has been tied to 'wife' and 'mother'
I have ceased to exist in name
My identity has been slipping through my hands
The hands you hold so tightly
(but my fingers hurt and I need to let go)
You're a good man and you say you love me
(But you don't show it, I'm just supposed to know)
I speak and you reply in one word or become defensive at "my tone."
You think your phone and the articles on it are more important than
the words
of the one you supposedly love
But you tell me you love me
And you don't hit me
So I should be grateful
It's more than most women in my family have ever had
So I stay quiet in my suffocating moments
I am the one who takes care of our daughter
Gives her everything she needs
For 10 years now
If I ask you to do something you look inconvenienced
If I don't ask and hope or assume it will be done, it never is
And I'm tired love
So so tired
I swear I love you
I do I do I do I do
But if I did (the way I should)
I wouldn't have to convince myself
To Stay
Phantom
while widows weep by the old Saint Francis a procession of dark drags in red lipstick kick up the dust from Katrina
powdering their twisted faces with narcolepsy and narcotics
laced viagra and voodoo
inside there is a silent hum
of hallelujah and warm bread
stacked in cold cardboard boxes
stained glass and suicide
the pity alters the ions in the air as
the thick fingers of the priest
pull at his collar as he prays
silently and struggles to breathe
choking on the thick hypocrisy
in the hot Louisiana air
the line will end at the red string
and all of the marchers will fall
like the fools they are
and the widows will fix
another seat for the wounded
at the old Saint Francis on State street
Tonight’s Prose Discord Zoom Writing Event
Tonight @Shells called for a Discord Zoom Write and I am so grateful I was able to accommodate. @Ferryman and @Putski joined and @MeeJong hosted. We started with a word list generated from the theme "Movement" and each contributed three words then each wrote a piece with the theme "Stillness" which incorporated as many of the words in the word list as we could. We then each wrote for ten minutes individually, shared those pieces and chose one piece to write collaboratively to finish.
Here is the word list:
Flow
Leap
Transient
Cabbage Patch
Susurration
Run
Skip
Hokey Pokey
Murmuration
March
Fly
Mashed Potato
And here is the writing:
10-Minute Individual Writes:
Mee Jong
It was midnight when I got the call. The night was dark and stormy, which is both cliche and 100% true. It was that transient time of year when it felt like winter one day and spring the next, then back to winter. Sometimes, both within one day. But I digress.
Everyone remembers those moments which shock their lives into stillness. For me the biggest one was the call on that dark and stormy winter-spring night-morning. I was deep in a dream about being the one starling in the murmuration who was out of sync. Humans were below oohing and aahing and then they saw me and a susurration went through the crowd, what’s wrong with that one? It’s so out of sync, isn’t it?
It was like the bird version of me doing any of the dances my peers were doing. It didn’t matter if it was the Cabbage Patch, Hokey Pokey or Mashed Potato, I was always a step behind or ahead. I couldn’t even do the damn twist.
Man. The call. I swear I’m getting to it. So the call comes in, I was not asleep. I never am at midnight, except on New Year’s Eve when I am supposed to be and everyone else is. Oppositional defiant to the end I guess. But yes, the call. They tell me there has been a terrible accident. Could I get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible? My husband is in critical condition.
I couldn’t take the moment to let my emotions flow. I tried to run to the car but it felt like I was walking backwards. I wished fervently I could turn time backwards, but it wasn’t a movie and I wasn’t a superhero who could affect time.
Ferryman
The murmuration stops mid-flow, holding perfectly in the air above. My heart leaps into my throat, and I expect it to skip a beat, but there’s nothing. No panicky feeling of a hollow chest, no shallow breaths taken in near-gasps. All is frozen, motionless. Shadows don’t creep along singed grass, but they stand stock-still as if marched in and stood at attention.
I notice a fly, as if preserved in amber, perched in a pool of my blood.
I want nothing more than to run away from this nightmare in daylight, but this thought is transient, fleeting, dancing away towards the edge of my awareness.
Nothing moves but my eyes, and that’s when I notice him. He stands tall, shrouded in black, flowing towards me without his feet ever landing in the soil of the cabbage patch he moves through.
I feel more than hear a susurration; the air begins to vibrate with a dread I know instinctively.
This thing is here for me, in this place not so far from my home. Slava Ukraini, they said when I volunteered.
As terrified as I am, I take comfort in the fact that those who lie near me will never see Moscow again.
Putski
I leapt at the disco ball hovering over the floor.
Flying against all odds I cannot reach my goal.
Missing my mark, I perform the hokey pokey on roller skates.
A transient move at best.
Marching forward a susurration distracts my retreat.
I skip across the creek to leap upon the far shore.
My murmuration lost to the flow of the water.
Running into the night,
I celebrate my escape by dancing the mashed potato.
Shells
There was a flow of smoke, just a voided mind. I was staring at the skies, lost in the void. Of the dawn Colliding with the lost moments of midnight and you and stolen moments.
Just fading scenes of whispered words and transient dreams. Roadside bars and vacancy signs against a bleak interstate nod
We were on the run and laughing. Just a leap of faith against a naysayers nod. We smiled as they told us no, a hokey-pokey kinda song and dance. Just you and me...
And a J45 with a broken string.
Group Write in Full (I made slight edits as I was reading through to make the final post but nothing substantive to anything I didn't write, merely slight grammar corrections):
It was midnight when I got the call. The night was dark and stormy, which is both cliche and 100% true. It was that transient time of year when it felt like winter one day and spring the next, then back to winter. Sometimes, both within one day. But I digress.
Everyone remembers those moments which shock their lives into stillness. For me the biggest one was the call on that dark and stormy winter-spring night-morning. I was deep in a dream about being the one starling in the murmuration who was out of sync. Humans were below oohing and aahing and then they saw me, and a susurration went through the crowd, what’s wrong with that one? It’s so out of sync, isn’t it?
It was like the bird version of me doing any of the dances my peers were doing. It didn’t matter if it was the Cabbage Patch, Hokey Pokey or Mashed Potato, I was always a step behind or ahead. I couldn’t even do the damn Twist.
Man. The call. I swear I’m getting to it. So, the call comes in, I was not asleep. I never am at midnight, except on New Year’s Eve when I am supposed to be awake because everyone else is up waiting for the ball to drop. Oppositional defiant to the end, I guess. But yes, the call. They tell me there has been a terrible accident. Could I get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible? My husband is in critical condition.
I couldn’t take the moment to let my emotions flow. I tried to run to the car, but it felt like I was walking backwards. I wished fervently I could reverse time, but it wasn’t a movie, and I wasn’t a superhero who could affect the flow of time.
When I finally got to my car door, it wouldn’t open. I fumbled my keys and recovered them twice, but on the second recovery, the world spun beneath my feet. I stood still and earth moved on.
Driving would be beyond me, since standing was a challenge. My sister took my keys, and together we headed towards the hospital.
One misplaced sob, and we're all dead! That's what echoed in my head. I know she was once removed from the grief, but the experience was the same. You have to control and suppress and get done what needs to get done. I simply watched the passing lights from the passenger seat. The thoughts in my head reeling between what was and what could never be again. The ride lasted 10 lifetimes. I just remember stumbling out of the door in the parking garage and signing in at the desk.
***
I'm calling your name but you can't hear me. Maybe, muffled versions of verses I can't hear. I felt the throw, the initial ditch, just a toss from here to there and I'm calling your name...just silence and panic and spider web windshields and I'm fighting to find you and it's static and a.m. stations and I'm calling for my wife and it's blank now and just you and me and....
...stillness. I'm moving, but my body isn't. I looked to see if I am strapped to a gurney or hospital bed, but I'm not. No straps. But I cannot lift my arms. I cannot move my legs. I want to panic, I want to scream, but a nurse catches my eye in that moment, and suddenly I am in a dream. I am an ant, marching in the wrong direction. Away from the anthill. I want to go back to the safety of the formicary. My legs continue to move me away.
***
I’m not ready to face truth. I’m not ready to face anything. My whole body says no, my mouth says nothing. I deny where I am, where we are, where he is, by simply moving in a direction beyond those automatic glass doors. If I refuse to speak, then these things must refuse to have happened.
I do not believe we can stop being whole because someone refuses to acknowledge a stop sign.
And yet, despite my protestations, there you are. Eyes flutter through the invasion of intubation. Every breath forced through man's machinations. If there is a God, did he inspire this? Our past lives allowed lions to eat us or wounds to kill us. This is Shelly's Frankenstein.
***
I called myself home and was met by nothing. I'm nothing without you, broke. Acid ranked escapes fade away.
Broken veins and broken hearts,
Crossroads found and abandoned.
No escape.
i should tell you
my eyes can barely stay open. i can see the stars when i close them, and when i open them just a sliver i can kind of see the outline of your face in the dark. familiar nose, lips.
i'm on the brink of time, where i'm neither awake nor asleep, where all things are meaningless and dark and warm. my head fits perfectly against your chest.
it's barely words, but you whisper if i'm awake. it's barely words, but i murmur and lift my head. you slide out of bed, say you'll be on the porch. i wanna know if everything's ok. i wanna hold you. you say it is. you put on a flannel in the other room.
you come back and kiss me before you go.
i wonder if you're looking at the stars, i wonder how many you can see. i wonder what you're thinking of out there, alone. you'd been in a car accident that morning, nothing serious. thank god. maybe you're more shaken than you want to admit. maybe it's something else. a scratch on the driver's door, but still. terrified me.
i roll over and give you space for when you come back. i'm afraid that you're out there without me, i don't like that you're away. it makes me wonder when i started to care so much. it makes me think about how miserable it would be if something had happened. if you hadn't come back. i can't stomach it.
i wonder if you're thinking parallel thoughts, but i don't move an inch.
i fall into sleep, but i think i'd really fallen quite some time ago.
it's a relief, then, to wake up with you beside me. i can't tell what time it is, but it doesn't matter today. all i care about is draping an arm over you, nuzzling gently into your back. reveling in your warmth and presence.
it's never been this strong before, the collection of stars spinning in my chest. i don't know what to do with it.
i can only hold you tighter. and hope.
it hit in the dead of night
see that? it's the lightning.
like frankenstein's monster - electrified.
when did it happen,
when did the rhythm change?
my heart's not mine anymore,
it's yours.
i thought i was just a collection
of plastic straws, bent at the edges,
but the wind flows through me now.
plays a song i never want to end.
i never thought losing you
would break me
but now i think it would.
i can hear your heart beat,
my head on your chest.
i can see where the lightning has struck us both.
the wheels are spinning now,
surely as the globe.
this time is ours,
so won't you kiss me again?
A Story In The Clouds
As I sat on my porch each and every day.
I look up to the clouds where a simple story is told.
I stare at the sky to see a story pass my way.
A cloud shaped like a cowboy hat and the shape of a barrel of hay,
Rolled across wide and bold.
The story is sat for this day.
Fluffy cloud with rabbit feet
seems like the month of May.
I love watching them as they move a million stories untold.
Often seen in a soundless way.
There is always a story up there and you hope that it will stay.
The sky is gloomy when it's cold.
This scene is busy throughout the day.
At night the clouds are low tone,
they are all lead astray.
But even though the brightness is on hold,
The beauty in the story stays that way.
So the next time you sit on your porch and watch the clouds as they play.
The story you see is never old.
There is always a different story
on that day.
But sometimes they float in a different way.
i not I
Its been a few years, some days i wish i never met you, or loved you...
Truth is i’m hurt.
You loved me until you didn't, then used me because i was the only one there after all the bs.
i just wish you didn't act like i don't exist anymore.
How do you get over it so easy?
The way you looked at me when we ran into each other, so much nothingness in your eyes, so different from when you used to look at me with sparkles in them.
i truly think our love was the once in a lifetime love, a love meant to last.
Oh well, everything does have an expiration date...
Our last hug.
The hug I thought would deluge back all those memories,
Was the one that made me feel it was actually extinct.
That futile hug,
The hug that meant nothing to you.
The hug I thought would solve every complication,
That hug, the one that ended my biggest one.
That hospitable detached hug,
The hug I thought would be warm and heartfelt.
The tiresome worn out hug,
That hug I longed for.
That hug you didn’t want to participate in,
The hug I endured wasn’t the old one.
That hug that I contemplated would make you come to your senses,
The hug did nothing to you,
that it did to me.
Foreknowledge
I knew how this would conclude
yet I had expectation
I knew why I never truly granted one to love me
yet I decided you’d be the one
I knew I wasn’t deserving
yet neither were you
I knew I’d grieve you when I rouse up
yet you profess I didn’t exist
I knew we would terminate as strangers
yet I couldn't ever accept it
I knew I’d perpetually love you
yet you‘d turn away
I knew I was incapable of having someone to myself
yet you never wanted me anyway
I knew some would call me doolally
yet no one knew the things I’d do to have you back
I know I love you
Maybe someday you'll come back.