Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                Did Anyone Think to Roll the Stone Back into Place?

Easter Monday

Did cemetery management offer a refund?
(High quality burials don’t come cheap, you know)
And what happened to the guards posted to that tomb?
Probably a disciplinary write-up

Easter Tuesday

Upper Room Inc. sent a bill for a missing Cup
(We can’t have people pinching stuff, okay?)
At least it wasn’t a fraternity party
And the taxes these days; you wouldn’t believe!

Easter Wednesday

This stuff about miracles just makes me scoff
(Say, boss, can I have this next Sunday off?)

Find your place,
a thinking space
you can call your own,
inside your mind
it’s important to find
a private zone,
where you can be you
and first in the queue,
for good mental health
take some time for yourself

My average means I don’t have to take final exams.
So my bachelor's degree is a finished product.
I cranked it out, all that’s left now is the walk (May 18th).
Let’s call it my nearly forgotten masterpiece.
My schedule says that I start a 1-year ‘master of public health’ degree in 38 days.

It was my mom’s idea. She said, “You need to keep active” (pre- med-school).
It sounds crazier to me now than it did last year, when I was accepted and agreed.
Now, I feel like some chary, aging showgirl who’s about to be hustled back on-stage.
But what’s life without massive compromise?
Anyway, don’t cry for me. I’m still sizing it all up, I’ll figure it out.

I suppose we’re all out there hustling.
It’s our response to slowing med-school admissions,
those glitches in the medical, industrial education complex
or that’s how the narrative’s shaped, anyway.
It’s not the additional work that bothers me, I’m regular worker bee,

It’s the perma-threat of loneliness.
I’m already packing. Leaving feels real
and I'm surfing this maudlin wave tonight—shading deep blue.
The simple march of time will take away friends I’ve grown to love.
We’ve allegorised and transformed one another by proximity.

I’ve really loved it here.
.
.
Songs for this:
Graduation (Friends Forever) by Vitamin C
Graduation Day by Tony Rivers & The Castaways

If I am made to be alone in this lifetime,
then let me be.
I do not want to know anything about others.
I do not want to talk.
I do not want to form connections.

No pictures, no videos,
no souvenirs to hold.
No questions.
No conversations.
No ties, no threads,
no strings pulling me back.

I will listen only to what my soul can hold.
I will see only what softens my eyes.
I will feel only what my heart can take.

I will never try too hard.
Because I will be the judge of my own life.

To follow where my feet wander,
I will go where the wind does not need directions,
where my shadow is the only one that knows my name.

Let me run into the rain barefoot,
laugh into thunder,
dance with lightning until my bones burn to ashes.

I yearned to become one with the earth;
the sand, the wind, the sun, and the moon.
I will be the ocean.
I, too, will be the fire.

Loneliness will feel like a cloak of disappearance—
invisibility, and power.

To live.
To just exist.
And someday, to quietly cease,
without sound, without weight.

Let me feel less,
float more, and fade.

I only ask that the universe and its occupiers—
to let me just be.

they see your light
luminescent and burning with pale shades of pink and orange
they love to bask in its warm glow
but they could never sustain it so far

silly girl, always mistaking her own reflection as another's glow
when will you ever learn?

perhaps when your whole world is dim enough
and all the mirrors have fogged up
you will trace that sliver of light
on your own fingertips
in the iris of your eyes

painful, but necessary for you to finally realise
you are what you seek in everything.

They put my name on the box
but I don’t remember signing anything.

All I know is
the cookies smell familiar.
Like a Tuesday that never ended,
like the living room before the arguments
started showing up in the drapes.

They say they use real butter.
Small batches.
Heritage grains.
But I know
you can’t bake silence that warm
without a little blood in the dough.

The woman on the package is smiling
because she’s not allowed to scream.
Every wrinkle airbrushed to resemble trust.
Every crumb designed to disintegrate
just before you remember why you started chewing.

I keep eating.
Because what else is there?
Dinner was a voice memo.
Breakfast was a bookmark.
And no one texts first in this house.

There’s a flavor I can’t place—
something like
apology,
or static,
or being loved
by accident.

"Cookies.”
Now available wherever truth is sold
in resealable pouches.