I came back to the bookseller’s counter
advising that I wanted to utilize the new
nook.  

As I’d sniffed pages earlier,
we’d spoken of plucking guitar strings and
the benefits of
retreating into one’s office to write for the afternoon.

I used to do that.
No remorse, no regret, always cared what it meant...

after the clientele was seen, observed to be secure
in their homes,
tired eyes, hips, knees and backs noted
as required,
I left houses that didn’t belong to me,
slipped outside of lives that were not mine;
lives that I’d invested in anyway,
as much as it mattered and for what it was worth.

Slipping back into my office,
the blonde wood of the door shutting the hallway noise out
enough so that I could concentrate
on something other than the safety of some old lady,
retreating to the memory of what I’d just done
with the eyes of an outsider.

Write.
Write the sadness of that lonely old girl
out of your guts.

Write.
Write the misery of a 65 year old veteran
who’s fallen into homelessness after serving a country
that appears ungrateful but we both hope isn’t.

Resources, in the vernacular, are a slow go SNAFU,
a ***** that shows up
just as the fall breezes begin to bite
with December teeth.

Write.
(I tell myself again and again.)
So as not to cry
and do it here,
in this quiet,
paid-for space
so that you can feel like a writer,
not like a fraud,
a failure with a heart too big for your chest;
a devil in your brain who drives so fast that everything’s a blur,
a car-wrecked,
attention-span grab,
an emotional ambulance ride to nowhere good.

Write.
So that when the tears fall,
You can publish them,
Taking ownership before they dry.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2021