She holds regret between her teeth like a red thread of punishment she can’t fit through a needle - every time she tries to get rid of it, his face pricks the corner of her thoughts and she starts all over again.
She sits there, a reproachful patchwork of emotions picking at the loose threads that lay between him and her, like a vulture who picks at bones already clean of meat. She was threadbare, hanging like broken seams cut from blue muslin squares and bleached in the sun.
Smells of mothballs and old fabric clippings rushed the insides of her nostrils, while she unspun a new spool of black thread, replacing the red one - frayed and covered in her saliva. The remnants of desperate attempts to force a broken thing into working.
When she pulls the black thread through - when she no longer feels a familiar tug on the sinews connecting her heart to her ribcage - she allows herself to take in the colours of the world she knew before: ochres, indigos, mauves, even pewters - thimbles to the needle memories that pricked her mind.
Weaving the needle in and out - through loops woven from moments stitched into her skin and mind, she embroiders the story of letting go.
Prompt:“1. … find a passage [of your writing] dominated by your attention to imagery and the way your language sounds… Transfer it onto a page and begin making a poem from this skeleton.” from Nancy Pagh’s Write Moves, pg 44.
numbed with a lack of blood flow that stiffens the sinewy flesh –
splotchy and marbled and cold as stone.
II.
As if they were the bones of a bird, they crack and pop easily
under the pressure of movement –
cries of protest from my hibernating nerves.
III.
A ginger cat dozes quietly at the edge of the bed,
curled into a ball of warmth and soft down hair –
its paws wrapped loosely around its sleeping head.
IV.
The soft rise and fall of its tiny chest –
faint whooshes of air escaping a carved mouth –
both in time to the beats of low purrs rumbling in its belly.
V.
Whispers of a television set in the living room
and conversations heard from walls away –
their quiet intonations travelling as if through water.
VI.
There are faint swooshes of cars travelling to and fro
through the glass pane of my window –
reminders of the outside world – already very much awake.
VII.
I can hear my heart pumping blood through my chest
and can feel its beats tapping rhythmically
against the door of my sternum.
VIII.
The welcoming sign of life announcing its presence –
feeding oxygen to muscles tired and achy
with the strain of being deprived of rest.
IX.
The space heater generates a soft hum and a warm glow,
warming the expanse of the room ever so slightly –
a gentle nudge that tickles my toes.
X.
With the heat’s arrival comes the ebbing of the cold –
I feel it melt away from my fingers and my joints
until they are no longer iced over in stiffness.
XI.
Through the slits in my window blinds pours the sun –
a beaming light show of golden hues,
casting a yellow projection of the vermillion sky onto my floor.
XII.
My lukewarm hands rub the sleep from my eyes –
exposing them to the glaring face of an analog clock
tick
tock
tick
accusingly interrupting the
silent world of
the early morning.
This piece of poetry was written for assessment in my Creative Writing 265 class. We had to each choose a prompt from a selection in Nancy Pagh’s creative writing guide and anthology titled “Write Moves” and write a 1-4 page piece using said prompt. The exercise could take the form of a narrative prose, a simple list, a poem, a story, etc. I chose poetry because my writing most easily flows in the form of poetry nowadays – and that was of the utmost importance because I wrote this 12 hours before it was due, and polished it with 6 hours to spare!
The prompt I had chosen is as follows: “Make a llst of a dozen ‘small noticings’ in this moment: twelve tangible things you perceive with your five senses.” I hope this poem is able to embody the slow feelings and sensations of waking up in the morning. I believe it is within this point of time wherein the world is at its quietest, yet curiously at its busiest, as it slowly begins to awaken with the first rays of light. Happy reading. 🙂
P.S. I haven’t quite got the hang of the WordPress editing format – if I could remove those hideous lines between the stanzas while still keeping the gap I would!
exulansis 