Faded To Brown Coiled in Darkness
Prompt response: after the party
My camera broke
So there’s no choice
I have to paint with words
only, the words don’t come
when there’s no space to breathe…
If you could only see the red maple, yellow linden leaves infused with blue sky — dark bark confused with wired tendrils traipsing from house to house — data bites and bite-sized clips separating us into divisive parts.
I am alone with my thoughts — tired from walking this well-worn path where solitude’s reverie has become isolation’s blankness. Winter is settling in — and with it — ambivalence as a mushroom-top cloud floats by and a lingering sense of— what’s left?
I remember when these houses once held promises but now they’ve become boxes of soul-sucking stuff — oh the holes we dug in hopes of more space to breed happiness. How do we keep from drowning in it? I pour another glass to keep my mind from drifting toward thoughts of fucking you again.
No wonder I escape to the wild — seeking oxygen in search of you and me alone — where your fingers find their rightful path and my tongue slides down the contours of your chest and we let it all go on the moss-covered floor only for the witnessing of bare, sky born branches.
Death is upon us my love. Do we choose life while we have it? Or get lost in the darkness??? Is it even a choice — I sometimes wonder has the party parted with us — have we become the departed?
Breathe & Be Still ©2022 All Right Reserved
So, the camera did break and, eventually, the phone. The contacts all lost (most photos backed-up at least) but the poem… the one I was so near to finishing, gone. I did my best to recapture it.
In so many ways this poem had nothing at all to do with a prompt. But I hold onto J.D.’s prompts as I write wondering if they will find a natural path inward. In this case it helped me with the ending. As always, thanks J.D. Harms for lending your creative vision:
