Noticings are always within reach if your eyes are open. A friend’s phone call, text photo, or cherished smile from six feet away can keep your cup from emptiness. Yet eventually days bleed into one another, months lose their borders, leaving Mondays indistinguishable. Where weeks fall like dominoes. Small routines within repeated walls lead to smaller and smaller thinking. Loneliness swallows you into the basket of its belly. Where over time depression feeds itself with handfuls of separation. It blindfolds your eyes so slowly you that you forget that sight has been lost. You stop moving, reaching out your arms. Until one morning’s shock of sunlight reminds you there is a world beyond this box called myself.
They never guessed it could have happened.
It was too dark for some, others had gone into hiding.
They told us too, and then I did. You did too.
The pipe didn't reach far enough and we scratched our heads.
Because we knew, after trying the other way forward.
It looked like he had a gun in his hand, his life now lost.
Afterwards, her phone died without a way to recharge.
It became obvious when the lights flickered.
Time was running out before the doorway melted.
They didn't believe it could be possible, the distance between
farther than it appeared, like a funhouse mirror.
Attempting 100 times more than on that frightful Friday.
Then light broke through from the other side for no reason.
* Answers appear in random order and don't represent value
or popularity. No other poems were hurt in the writing of this poem.
This poem first published on Visual Verse, Vol. 8 Chapter 5.
Shared to earthweal open link weekend #141. Come join us.
Each month Visual Verse shares a compelling image and invites
writers – published or unpublished – to submit a piece in response.
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flashlight batteries - Ali Grimshaw 