floating and leaving no trace
in the graveyard in my chest
buried things
we don’t say anymore
decay
a reliquary of abandoned words
discarded phrases
each bound by
invisible threads
unbreakable threads
to that singular muscle
also trapped in my chest
with no shovel
to break the frozen ground
i try to dig them out
using my fingers
but pull back hands
broken, bloody, covered in bites
where the silence set its teeth
on the iron rails
long after the trains have passed
the echo of bells
silent birds
there will be no spring
no blossoms
no green buds
to reach for the yellow sun
no signaled ending
winter sleeps
and in his flawed dream
his eyes close
then open
a cold world shot through with ice
white intensity
——
the secret keeper
Weekly Word Prompt #25
(5) Words: | REACH | SHOT | INTENSE | FLAW | SPRING |
the too-warm tea cools
two tabled cups forgotten
lovers’ tight embrace
——
RonovanWrites
Weekly Haiku Poetry Prompt Challenge 85
Tight&Warm
angels’ hearts spring from fire
wings steel-forged
eyes composed of starless night
hands and feet and faces carved in marble
cold, fragile voices, quick to shatter
sharp like glass
they rise
though you cannot see them
they do not fly
yet the earth recedes
repelled under their feet
you feel the weight
of being left
beneath
a dried stain on the counter
where her coaster was ignored
her coffee cold in the cup
left because it’s all that’s left
of her
——
Day 23 of the Leap Year Poetry Prompt Challenge
Cold COffee (How We Cope)
we plummeted to earth
tumbling skin to skin
limbs entangled in white silk
an explosion of feathers
descended after us
drifting like snowflakes
and tasting of too-sweet sugar
as we fell
we made angels
in the sheets
horses will sometimes spook
so you put blinders on them
the assumption being
that what isn’t seen
can’t possibly hurt
until it does, because you
didn’t see it coming
sharp and pointed like an awl
and couldn’t avoid it
even if it was you
sometimes blinders are better
sometimes blinders are worse
when i was a kid i could buy
at the magic shop
or sometimes the drug store
magic smoke
dab between my thumb and forefinger
press together and spread apart
long strands would magically form
filaments
shiny waving gossamer
a gauzy arc between fingertips
a good trick
if you had dexterity enough
you made smoke appear from your hands
i found later
when i got into building models
that airplane glue
which smelled so good
and left me light-headed
did the same thing
the human soul stretches out
between us too
incredibly thin and almost
invisible but not quite
strongest when we are pressed together
thinner but still strong
still connecting
when we are apart
Words and Feathers 