“Six-and-a-Half Hours”
Published by The Raven Review (Summer 2024)
You hide in the space
between screen door and deadbolt,
watching as my head hits the pillow,
waiting for my breathing to slow.
You try every entry point,
determined to find your way in
as I turn from left side to right
then back again while the ceiling fan hums.
You find me sleeping,
lost in the best parts of today.
I am easy prey, the perfect victim.
You are invisible, the perfect invader.
You have no conscience
as you twist my memories
and exploit my primal fears.
A coward, only lurking when I’m defenseless.
The blue-uniformed harbinger you send
delivers the same message.
Night after night, year after year.
My five-year-old son is missing.
When I ask the officer if he’ll ever be found,
his eyes go hollow and he simply says no.
I sink into the door frame behind me.
The dreaded answer is always the same.
Unrecognizable faces scurry behind him,
looking at me with pity, then turning away.
They pull their raincoats tight around their shoulders
disappearing into damp, gray darkness.
Without remorse, you vanish,
leaving me gasping for air
as daylight pulls me away
from the chaos you created.
The aftermath clings to every part of me,
falling off in layers as I try to chase the details.
Straight black coffee and streaks of sunshine
set the world right again, but only for now.
I have spent decades trying to outwit you,
feeling powerless to stop your invasions,
until I finally stumble upon the thing that
keeps you locked out of my head for good.
Six-and-a-half hours is the limit--
the amount of sleep I can get before
normal morphs into nightmare.
Inadequate rest has become salvation.
I set an alarm as assurance against your tyranny,
mostly convinced that your reign is over.
I am free from the worst you can deliver,
and you are free to terrorize someone else.
“The Children of Rural Route 3”
Published by Beyond Words (July - August 2024)
We grew up in wide-open pastures,
mustard plants and thistles educating us
on the things cows would not eat,
barbed wire and electricity teaching us
about the places we could not go.
We collected frogs in tin buckets
and slid down muddy banks
beside wild, rushing rivers,
never realizing that they were
only flooded county ditches.
We followed curiosity down dead-end roads
that promised adventure
if we stayed on the path,
and threatened death in bottomless wells
if we wandered into the waist-high grass.
We stood on tiptoes in overgrown weeds
and peered through cracked windows
of abandoned farmhouses,
cautiously pushing on unlocked doors and
leaving a tapestry of footprints in every room.
We chased each other around
boarded-up country school houses
and screamed with wild abandon
as we leapt from the kind of swings
we longed for in our own backyards.
We pressed our backs against the damp earth
as the pitch black of midnight came and went,
a million stars hovering at the ends of our fingertips
and the beginnings of everything
still waiting to be written across a blackboard sky.