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Last night I scalded myself Mama and as the boiling water ran down my arm
I saw you through the pain and you were smiling and everything was wrong
how you are alive and yet gone, how you exist and yet don’t, how I was never right
and somehow always mistaken
If I don’t come from you then who? My mitochondrial existence and all the women before us
seem to pass into memory and then detached, by our severing
every day I wake and I think of you and then I remember
you’re not thinking of me
What tenderized my heart so? Pounding it until it cried out
I know it’s futile and still I yearn
What compelled it to continue beating even after the obvious?
I loathe that about myself and I love that about myself
I am like a ship in a bottle, you cannot figure out how I came to be
full and whole, encased in glass and yet
I am neither full nor whole, but hungry and drowning
a featherweight, a word, something you created and then said
no you can take it back, I don’t want it any more
(I never did / I pretended / it was the mask of a mask in a mask)
and so I went far and nowhere
near and not close
wondering what will come first? The last loss of you, or the first diminishment of
my eternal want?
Who am I kidding? With endings there remain
more scabs to pick off, prayerful knees and bowed heads
no amount could achieve
forgiveness or whatever it is I need to be to
change everything that cannot be changed
so I watch myself and you
I watch nothing and no one
empty their expressionless pockets into water
watch the colors of us turn dark and indistinguishable
as if we’d never been and I am not sure
where or who I am without you
like a glass blower who stands on the quayside
wondering if
the boats will come today
marking the horizon with their
dusky forms
Where does it live
The difference between
Indifference and disgust
The Bard wrote that
“Fancy is with gazing fed”
Then what is fed by looking away
And in the object with being unseen
By what alchemy is an alloy
Forged of longing for connection
And longing for escape
What shape the blade made
Of such a metal stabbing
A heart straight through?
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I think you have inherited Christine Ray’s ability to write about anything brilliantly
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High praise indeed, especially considering the source. Thank you.
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I’m so darn proud of you because when we first met you didn’t write poetry although I knew you had and could and gradually you’ve been coaxed out of your shell and you’re so talented and it’s such a joy to read your work both here and on Christine’s prompts. I do hope a book will come of this. But moreover I am just really glad because you are a talented writer and I’m so happy our belief in you brought it out xo
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I think I have fallen into the company of Contagious Poets. The creativity, honesty, and freedom of so many (and the growing number responding to Christine’s prompts) is both an inspiration and encouragement.
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You realize that’s a fantastic title? Just saying!!!
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I’ve had that thought too. Hmmm – an anthology? Or, maybe for the collected Comment Poems? Of course, so far, you are the author of the majority of the commented upon poems. I might have to try to be more fair to the others. He he!
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You ought!
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I will. Have I told you lately how much I enjoy your encouragement? hugely
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The same I can say for you. I just re-read your submission for The Well of Loneliness and it inspired my own attempt.
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Happy Dance!
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
TheFeatheredSleep at Hijacked Amygdala – A cold burning
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So goddamn powerful. ❤
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Thank you so much brother 🙏
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Wonderful writing, as always ♡
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Pingback: Burning without fire — @ hijacked amygdala – TheFeatheredSleep
This is such a heartbreaking piece. I felt it deep down to the core of me. No child should feel the type of pain you write about when it comes to your Mom. *sighs*
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Thank you for being in my life.
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Hey, you’re most welcome. You don’t have to thank me for that. *big hugs*
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Such powerful anguish
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Thank you so much dearest D
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