Mother, may I laugh with you, even as you breathe
out your last memory on the Covid floor?
Oh the days we laughed, once I was a child no more. Continue reading
Author: roughwighting
Orphan Plants
At first, they were all silent.
After all, they’d been alone before, on what the “Others” called “weekends.” And sometimes they were alone for a longer time when a particular Other went away on something called a “Vacation.”
But they’d never been left for this amount of time. And they’d never been all together in one large room. Continue reading
Men in Black
I’m alone again. Toby is out on patrol. I accepted that he was a police officer when he asked me to marry him two years ago. I accept that he puts his life in danger every day for public safety. I accept that the men and women he works with on the police department are, as he says, “his family.”
But I am not accepting his third stint in three months of the late night shift.
The Grocery List
“Chocolate squares (unsweetened), check.
Flour, butter, check.
Sugar, eggs, check.
Heavy cream, check.
Bottle of red, check.”
Samantha sighed as she mentally checked off her grocery list. The essentials only. She didn’t have time for non-essentials, like milk or cereal or pasta. She swiped each container with a Lysol wipe as she unloaded her grocery cart at the store, and then swiped the seven items again when unloading the grocery bag once she reached home.
Safe. Continue reading
The Weight of Thoughts
Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of my thoughts. And that’s wrong, all wrong, so I strain more in the down dog position, where my arms and wrists and shoulders take on the weight of my trunk.
My trunk. What a word for my body, which is pack full of multi-grain toast now at 9 in the morning, as well as three cups of hot green tea that have not found a way to warm my fingers, cold down to the bone. Continue reading
