Creative Writing

… And right before you barefoot-smash it you see

it peeking from under that part of the fridge you really

didn’t want to look at cuz “Remind me to grab that pickle” from last week. …

Coffee and cup pairing – I won’t dwell on the decision but the right cup does more than just deliver a stimulant. It’s the first in a day of decisions; done well and I might hit all green lights on the way to work.

Through a beam from a too-large flashlight,
The officer’s serious face spit
A few pretty easy questions at me.
What’s your hurry? Do you know the speed limit in town?
Why didn’t he ask me about the two girls, the bags of ice and frozen strawberries sweating together
on that soft blue fabric of the front seat?

…

It’s automatic, some times, repetitious; like a sunset, a broken heart,

a land at war;

The morning rises, the heart flutters and warms, the peace echoes.

…

She misses one every few days. The 600 mg Gabapentin casts a shadow and obscures that tiny crumb of a Mirtazapine – it’s just a little brown M&M boxed alongside a German chocolate cake. It doesn’t help that these mostly white meds are served from a mostly white med-minder box. Still, Mom knows her pills and she gets most of them down.

Maggie’s stare – part embrace and part lament – said people, I adore, are in there and not right here. I want us all in one room together.

If
she
were
here, then
They
would
be.

Charlene and I, enjoying don’t-think-about-it weather, began walking up the still-sunny side of 2nd Ave. around 5 pm. With complete confidence or perhaps simple indifference, she strolled the clamorous Upper East Side with the same self-reliance that carried her through peaceful Winona, Minn. I’d not seen this side of my mother-in-law before, or maybe I just hadn’t been alone with her to notice.

Listen, we need to break for a commercial message.

But when we come back, we’ll hear sages with rhymes for the ages.

This is the Rhyme Games World Series on ESPN,

the Exceptional Story & Poetry Network.