Let instinct guide you
Take my hand in yours
Take my lines in your palms
Wrap yours in mine
I lie fallow
Waiting…
The author and site owner can be reached at leeundercedartrees@gmail.com.
Let instinct guide you
Take my hand in yours
Take my lines in your palms
Wrap yours in mine
I lie fallow
Waiting…
Wake! Wake up!
It screams.
Hear me! Get up!
It whistles.
…
This marriage of elements simply lives a short, furious existence, however it pleases, until exhaustion.
Pale-faced like the ticking round clock on the wall.
Wide-eyed, I listen and wait, hoping to drift.
Hours pass, still hoping.
Too much day sleep, too much caffeine, I think to myself.
Sadistic brain replays conversations, probing with questions, looking for errors.
…
Always analyzing, always seeking the mistakes, always finding a reason to blame.
I’m searching for your innermost colours.
With each one found, I want to splash and lather them all like watercolour onto coarse, textured paper.
They travel together
All within reach of each other, never wandering far
Taking their turns
One then the other then the other
For decades
Simultaneously hating and guarding each other
For you who’ll walk with me when I’m in need
Seeing in me what is invisible to the eye
Who, when I drop
Pieces of me in the grass
Will gently place them back into my fumbling hands
…
There’s a kind of love for our first kin
Universally defensible, globally understood
Truly unconditional
There’s another for those we find briefly
For months or years
Sharing our space and time
Where captivations intersect
Yet another is reserved for so few
Bearing rings and keys
Sharing bathrooms and kitchens and beds
…
Their memories are vague concepts to me.
Myself, who never knew their fields:
I can only catch glimpses from a distance,
aided by stories told across chasms of time
and left written in the sand when the empathy tides recede
on memory shores.
…
I killed an insect on my desk this afternoon.
I’m not sure what it was, but it was probably harmless.
I could have put it outside.
I could have gently shooed it somewhere else.
But, I didn’t.
I crushed it, with a tissue, so I wouldn’t dirty my fingers.
Now the stink of death lingers in the room,
and I wonder where my heart’s gone.
.
June 4, 2025