I remember as you stood bare feet
tiptoes on the red linoleum

reaching up to pull
the shade at dusk;

I left before the sun rose
you slept weeks

before realizing
there was no return.

You're a terrible person
You're a corrupt girl
You use men for the fun or the advantage
You terrorized my world
You left me hanging
You left me heartbroken
You were an angel once,
What happened?

We stand on the sidewalk
cousin Jamie and me, with

a bible in my right hand,
I drape my left arm

around her lopsided
shoulders and cold brace;

she seldom smiles,
even as the shutter clicks.

She is soap smooth from Achilles
to scalp’s apex

for years contemplated
suicide

instead, she learned
the right nutrients

creates life that bursts
above all

else.

I wish all my writing  depicted gaggles
wedging south over mossy lakes.

They more often wander to  legs,
tangerine tongues, the taste

of sweat and smell of cheap hairspray;  
for thoughts like these, I feel no
                                          shame.

The wet smoldering scent
of burning dogwood
leaves

reminds me of the hours
spent in the garden
kissing

the soiled palms of
a woman tousled
from work.

Photograph an evening sunset
of a lake, wide and long,

one thousand times more
blue than the morning star,

and vulnerable, like a late
October Rose of Sharon

blossom, minutes before
fall’s first killing frost;

hold the picture close, as
it is your life, our lives.

To think that the soft silk pillow
of truth rests inside the lazy chest
It is then the lid of concentrated equilibrium
blows off with the same wind
that cuts the cord of your young yesterdays
and melancholia has permission
to evaporate like ether from life's
mysterious purpose

But I confess, these old brown grocery paper
bag hag hands use to hold a rough picture
of futures promise as if they were only on loan
They'd shave off the barked mahogany
of derelict past generation opinion for
payment into a cult of wire haired sailors who
thought that saying hello was getting too personal
Bilge drunk, disappointed and in denial, begging
the skies wet breath for compass direction
with broken magnetos

But the longer I live, the more I find myself
giving yield to a life that doesn't always
seemed determined by me

Written by Sara Fielder © Feb 2016