Despair

Tonight, again, she called me from the lockup. Afraid of the phone police and the Tylenol nurse and the mumbling man who speaks through the ceiling. And I want to help, without humouring her or being false, for these things are sensed. But I fear to look into that laughing mirror.

Untraveled

On the road this day, I am headlong for a leaving. Grasslands vast and even. Lily ponds, and bridges over fens. I count the curves to my rented bed…to its deep dream of riding on ocean swells. I feel a thing, and name it: the loom of Jupiter.

Marlena

We called her Shadow,
for she had eyes that you couldn’t look into.
Ones that made the Sun stop short.
Once, she seemed to disappear into a colder realm.
I made her my study-
her raison d’être my fool’s fetish.
Was she waiting for some singularity
into which she could step?

A therapy of softness

On this night, sleep is in want of accoutrements to buy its acquiescence. At best, though, it is cumulative and marked by awakenings in cold sparkles of pain. Sensing a summons, the somnolent cat comes, lends its warmth and the balm of its lullaby purr. Art by u/tuftofcare (Reddit user)

The beast

What I would withhold from you is twice withheld within my selves, for the soul’s captain, unwilling, must drag along the unruly beast that licks itself and revels in its hideousness. [Art by Allan Swart]

Going away

She is disappearing, your Mom, said the Dad to his son. And all of your anger with her- arisen out of fear, sadness, and helplessness, is not wrong, though it hurts. She is consumed with another realm, and you speak only to a placeholder who grows more listless with time.

Apart

Night splints hold teeth in position, I believe. There is a baseless fear of dismemberment, of awakening without the sum of one’s parts, like the cave of a missing tooth. I lie in bed running, and too fast. Of what do predators dream?

Sparrows

The maple creaks under the weight of the sparrow. The devious cat thinks to corner a drifting leaf, while the squirrel remonstrates. My wheel chair does not do well on stairs. You come. Not afraid anymore, I tell you things.