I have a daily creative practice, which includes a 20-minute free-write, inspired by a line (or two) from the "poem of the day" at Poems.com. The writing isn't meant for public consumption, just to get the juices flowing, before I get started on the "real" stuff. But today... I kind of like what I came up with, so I'm going to break my own rules and share it (with the caveat that the other rules include no editing, no polishing, so please don't come back at me with fixes, because THAT AIN'T THE POINT).
Today's jump off point was from Two Poems by Julie Bowsma – the first poem began with "Dear ghosts, how can we stop the sunlight spinning the story from our hands?" and ended with "All I know is this: even before I was born I breathed a loss not my own." (So you just know I relished it!)
Here's where that took me:
Trauma has tentacles. Backward and forwards. Like the stone chip on the windshield, left unattended, as it spider-webs across the flat clarity, until all is unstable. Until the soft bounce of a feather sends it into oblivion.
Am I the feather? I was afraid I was, for the longest time. Now I feel like the fist. Don't you see this is broken? Don't you want it replaced? Here, let me speed up the process, before somebody loses an eye.
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