this familiar sequence
continuing
without its former partner…
a place on the kitchen island
your body still avoids,
not out of longing,
but because the pattern was shaped
when two people shared this room.
The pattern remains.
You lock the door the way
you were taught by repetition,
not instruction.
Two turns.
A pause.
A check of the handle.
The small habits that once aligned
with another person’s rhythm
still run their course.
In the hallway, you adjust the light
as if someone else were behind you.
Without expectation.
Bereft of hope.
Just that residue of long co‑presence
settled into the body’s timing.
Nothing asks to be resolved.
Nor seeks to be undone.
The sequence is intact because time
once braided two routines into one.
One routine remains.
This is the quiet fact of it:
a person shaped the way you move through your own rooms.
Their departure did not revise the pattern.
The pattern continues because it was earned through years of ordinary repetition.
You do not chase it.
You do not correct it.
You simply notice the way your body still carries the imprint
of someone who no longer walks beside you.
No wound.
Nary a signal.
Not a task.
Only the continued rhythm
of a life once shared,
still present in the smallest procedures of your day.
.
May 22
May 22, 2026 at 9:45 PM UTC
"A Small Hedge of Words"
Some say I lose the forest
chasing metaphors in the moss.
That I trim truth to fit a stanza
and dress up plain meaning
in alliteration's finest frock.
But if truth sits stiff in the open,
what joy is there in waving at it?
I'd rather coax it out sideways-
through riddles, refrains, and
the scent of freshly pruned syntax.
Call me elaborate, indulgent,
even evasive at times- but trust:
there's honesty in ornament
if you learn to read the flourish.
I may be that “some poet” you flagged,
waltzing past the point
with a thesaurus in tow.
But I'm not lost-just lingering,
where language grows wild
and truth hides willingly.
.
May 19
May 19, 2026 at 10:43 PM UTC
“The Brew”
I look at the machine.
It’s... plastic. Black.
Waiting.
You take the scoop.
Now, this is important. The grounds? They have to be... precise.
If you don't... measure?
Well.
Disaster. Obviously.
You pour the water. In the back.
It makes a sound. A gurgle. Like a... wounded bird.
But efficient.
The drip.
...
The drop.
...
It takes... time.
And then? You drink it.
Black. No sugar.
Maybe... a little cream. If you're feeling... wild.
But you gotta ask yourself...
Did you clean the ***
Because if you didn't...
We have a problem.
.
May 18
May 18, 2026 at 5:43 AM UTC
“first time putdown”
He had spent the morning
working on it.
Not a masterpiece—
just a thing he’d made
from the materials at hand:
cardboard, a stub of pencil,
a few lines he thought
were clever enough
to show someone older.
He waited until the right moment,
or what he believed
was the right moment—
the grown‑up at the table,
coffee cooling beside a stack of papers,
the room steady and unhurried.
He placed the page down gently,
as if the gesture itself
might earn a kind of respect.
The grown‑up glanced at it.
Not long—just a flick of the eyes,
a quick assessment
the way someone checks a receipt
before tossing it aside.
A comment followed.
Short.
Flat.
Delivered without malice,
but with the kind of certainty
that leaves no space for reply.
He nodded, though
nothing had been asked of him.
He folded the page once,
then again,
as if reducing its size
might reduce the sting.
The grown‑up returned to their papers.
The room resumed its usual rhythm.
Nothing dramatic had happened,
yet the air felt slightly altered—
as though he’d stepped into
a category
he hadn’t known existed.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t argue.
He simply carried the folded page
to the bin outside,
dropping it in with the same care
he’d used when offering it.
Later, he would learn
that the comment said more
about the grown‑up’s limits
than his own attempt.
But in that moment,
all he understood
was that he had brought something forward,
and the world had shrugged.
.
May 12
May 12, 2026 at 9:57 PM UTC
A worker chalks a line
across the pavement,
measuring where the new
conduit will run.
He doesn’t speak of purpose;
the gesture is enough—
a quiet geometry that keeps
the district breathing.
Nearby, the library’s back door
is propped open.
Inside, volunteers sort
the taped‑up boxes
of donated recordings:
voices from meetings, vigils,
street festivals that ended
before I was born.
Someone has written
dates on the lids,
not as verdicts,
but as coordinates for
whoever comes next.
The room feels like a place
where the future leans in to listen,
waiting for its turn
to continue the work.
.
May 10
May 10, 2026 at 1:59 AM UTC
“The Line That Never Clicks Back”
I’ve been placed
on hold again—
not by a person,
but by the day itself.
The hours meander
in their slow, circular way,
a kind of gentle please wait
woven through everything
I try to begin.
I walk the small perimeter
of my thoughts,
listening for the click
that means something
finally returned to me—
but it’s only the air
shifting its weight
against the window frame.
There’s a strange comfort
in this half‑lit pause,
this neighborhood quiet
where nothing quite starts
and nothing quite ends.
It feels like someone
I used to know—
the way they’d linger
on the edge of a sentence,
as if the rest of it
might arrive later.
So I stay here,
receiver warm in my hand,
heart steady in its waiting,
letting the silence
do what it does best:
remind me
I’m still on the line.
.
May 10
May 10, 2026 at 12:44 AM UTC
“two thresholds”
Twilight gathers itself along the verge,
and the streetlights answer in quick succession,
each one sparking awake as though racing
the first faint ****** above the rooftops.
A few clouds drift low, taking on that bruised tint
that belongs only to the hour when the day
gives up its last argument.
The lamps flare, steady themselves,
and the road settles into its evening geometry.
But at the far end of the cycle,
when the sky begins its slow brightening,
the same lamps falter out of order —
one cuts, then another, then a cluster
as if the grid were shrugging off its duties
in no particular pattern.
Neons gutter, blink once,
and surrender to the paling air.
The sky lifts by degrees,
washed first in a faint mineral blue,
then in the thin gold that slips between buildings
before the sun itself arrives to finish the work.
Between these two thresholds,
the city keeps its own quiet contest —
what lights rise, what lights fall,
and how the sky decides
which one wins the hour.
.
May 9
May 9, 2026 at 6:59 PM UTC
“what's been holding you?”
Let the body speaks first.
Not in grand declarations —
just a slow drag across the shoulders
after too many hours upright,
the way a tightening throat
swallows when you've more days
than you meant to,
that small tremor of hands
that keeps asking you
to set something down.
It has been the one in your room
while you hurried past yourself.
Now it waits, steady,
as if to say:
start here,
with what carries weight,
with what has been holding you
longer than you realised.
.
May 8
May 8, 2026 at 9:30 AM UTC
“The Barker After Hours”
Hear he. Hear he, staying on
after the gates are chained,
walking the length of the midway
with a torch that flickers like a tired star.
A few coloured bulbs keep their vigil,
constellations pinned to the pitch‑black
as if the night sky was a circus tent
where the carnival once stood.
The machinery has hunched into itself—
no brass‑bright music now,
just the low domestic murmur
of motors cooling, belts settling,
a distant clatter like dishes in a sink.
From far off, even the small creatures
step off their wheels,
their tiny circuits paused
as though the whole world
has agreed to rest.
He checks the stalls one by one,
counting what the day has left behind:
a stray ticket stub,
a feather from a costume,
a smear of colour on the boards
where someone leaned too close.
He notes each thing in his pocket ledger,
not for profit,
but because night
unfolds to be witnessed.
At the coaster’s base,
he listens for the last sigh of the track,
that faint metallic settling
that tells him the day is truly over.
He touches the rail—
warm still—
as though greeting a friend
who has worked too hard.
When he reaches the Ferris wheel,
its lights blink in slow rotation,
a quiet sky-map
drawn by human hands.
He stands beneath it,
letting the colours wash over him,
a private ceremony
for a place that will wake again
only when the crowd returns.
Then he locks the final gate,
turns toward the empty field,
and walks home through the dark
carrying the soft afterglow
of a world that only fully breathes
once everyone else has gone.
.
May 4
May 4, 2026 at 4:02 AM UTC
"ANZAC 2026"
A faint drift of camp‑smoke moves across the oval
as neighbours gather in a loose ring,
boots scuffing dew‑dark grass.
Someone reads from an old diary,
paper soft at the folds,
its words settle over us
like a weather front passing slow across the range.
The march is smaller this year,
but each step lands with its own weight.
Kids lean from verandas with cardboard poppies,
a brass line warms the air near the cenotaph,
and the crowd parts gently
so, an older man can steady himself
before placing a wreath cut fresh from his yard.
By afternoon the town thins back into its rhythms—
shops half‑open, dogs restless at the fence.
A few of us stay near the memorial garden,
letting the day breathe out around us,
aware of how these gatherings
shape the way we carry our shared work forward
long after the bugle has faded.
.
Apr 24
Apr 24, 2026 at 9:59 PM UTC