You’re pancakes at 8 AM
and bitter coffee drowning the remnants of lackluster dreams.
You’re a window half-cracked
and a chilly morning breeze,
tickling your toes
and brushing your knees.
You’re the hour before the deadline,
and I’m writing as fast as I can.
You’re the journal on my desk
and the pen in my hand.
See a handwritten version of this in my new journal on my instagram, @thoughtsofacatalyst!
do you ever find yourself
stumbling to spell a word
so simple that you cannot believe
you’ve forgotten
stumbling over words
on pages and by mouth
stumbling to repeat the last words
you said when you were drunk
on tuesday night and we were lying on the ground
the grass dampening with early morning's dew
picking our favorite constellations
“that’s my favorite”
and knowing nothing about astrology
or the formations of our conversations
blabbering nonsense
until we decided 4 am was late enough for a work night
we woke up hours after we should have
and still made time to cook breakfast
the empty bottles of fireball replaced with orange juice
I sit at the table admiring them:
their jagged petals and misshapen leaves.
The ends of each triangular detail now curled,
and death begins from the end--
crippling and strangling--
the dark red and now almost-pastel green.
They have been sitting here since November’s end
and just begin to die
despite not being tended for over a month.
She always plucked the dead leaves
from the plastic pot,
shoveling a small handful into the garbage.
Coffee brewed as she filled her watering can;
“It only needs about half a cup,”
she’d say each time I’d offer my help
as she took over the task...
fearful that I may kill her damn flower.
The prickly poinsettias taunt me now,
for I have not held my end of the deal.
She gathered for me
the most perfect bundle of lilacs,
shooting it toward my reaching arms,
yet pulling it away
before my grasp met the skinny stems.
Her beckoning voice pulls me closer to her.
The flowers fray and splinter and harden,
stabbing the plump tips of her fingers,
blood oozing over her pink fingernails
and dripping onto the violet petals.
She giggles and tosses the bundle at me.
Smoke surges from the center,
and I drop the flowers
before they are consumed in fire.
The fire from the flowers
engulfs the dilapidated walls around us
and she grabs me,
digging her bloody fingernails into my shoulders
and gouging my seared skin.
She plucks the grafts of flesh
from beneath her nails and pulls me into the fire
with her.
The chalky smoke
allows only a few words to escape my mouth;
I plead for my life.
Her flailing arms retract
and cover my muffled cough,
disallowing any new breath to enter
my nearly lifeless body.
"Spill Your Guts"
Rosalie is one-half of a set of ten-year-old boy and girl twins growing up in Fayette County, West Virginia, and she is the daughter of a teacher and a busy journalist, whose usual “duty calls” excuse has strained her relationship with her children. Rosalie and her mother are at the park together for the first time in a long time, and Rosalie—the too-smart-for-her-age, observant, dare devil—is trying to stand on the banister of the steps leading up to the highest point of the playground: the same point her brother, Royce, fell from that led to two broken arms and over a year of physical therapy.
Therapy has also dominated a large portion of Rosalie’s life; she goes through several speech therapists until she finally bonds with Miss Hattie and says her first words at five years old. Her mother’s dismissiveness as stubbornness and inability to attend Rosalie’s speech therapy appointments leads the twins’ father to quit his job and become Rosalie’s personal homeschool teacher. Today is Rosalie and Miss Hattie’s five-year anniversary and evaluation, to which Miss Hattie’s boss calls for termination of services, and a dynamic relationship begins to unfold. When their mom leaves for a short trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts and then extends her stay for at least a month, Royce’s naivety clouds his judgment while Rosalie’s suspicions surface.
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