solitary

(http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/mary-jane-ansell)

the girl knits a collection

of odds and ends –

 

various plastic containers,

glass jars for holding candlelight,

vintage books as coffee coasters –

 

this is how she values herself.

 

she scatters them like tiny diamonds

into the folds of her tiny home and

waits, broad-shouldered, for someone

to ask what she thinks of late at night.

 

where most would turn their heads

she curls tired branchy fingers around

a decades old mirror that fogs at the

edges; she sees nothing in its frame

and desperately she buys it anyway.

 

then there is this:

 

she is cooking for two

with eyed potatoes from

the three-tiered fruit basket

beside her kitchen window.

 

a single battered apple

is sliced into depressing

origami shapes on an

old cutting board.

 

a chilled pot of coffee complete

with floating sediment is placed

beside two ceramic mugs each

depicting the flag of New Mexico.

 

she sets the table with

her bones as cutlery and

folds her hands in prayer,

thanks no one for such a feast.

 

she unfolds a newspaper in

her lap – August 3rd, 1998 –

and looks across at herself,

every morsel already gone.

 

expired

(http://notateenmum.com/category/surrealism-2/)

I am stuck standing in the

mud of a time where words got

knotted together because there was no

lack of voices in our home, just the constant

knocking of chatter against the windows and the

walls of weather, what’s-for-dinner

but all of it was like the tiniest of earthquakes in

my chest, that old reliable constant

loud or barely heard it was there,

the warmest grip on my bones in the

bluish hue of the television

 

but now

 

I am knocking on the walls and

holding my breath to hear if my

memories come pounding back, and setting a

table for a solitary two is only romantic

sometimes because there is a catch,

when you are exchanging

expired stories over breakfast eventually

they all run out and the silence comes,

that deafening reminder to turn up

the heat, turn up the radio, anything to

take the edge off