It's odd this thing called fear to be so uniquely tied to this thing called joy, ever so odd indeed; the juxtaposition of emotions has found itself twisting through my heart and mind not once, but twice.

On a crisp morning in September and at a cold early hour in October, nothing can quite prepare you for the highest level of joy and the ever growing sensation of fear as you hold your newborn child in your arms.

Seven writers bring the metal and mettle to number 57, stretching their fingers across time and space, across verse and touch, into our cores, and the air around the rest. Hot coffee, cold reads, with eight pieces of undeniable beauty to command our attention, and send us away floating.

Here's the link to 57:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_J3j0uL5I

And here are the pieces featured.

https://www.theprose.com/post/824709/the-stone-cutter https://www.theprose.com/post/824539/the-blank https://www.theprose.com/post/823998/heroes

https://www.theprose.com/post/823917/the-plover https://www.theprose.com/post/823875/ode-to-a-prizefighter https://www.theprose.com/post/823721/swings-both-ways

https://www.theprose.com/post/823715/uncompromising https://www.theprose.com/post/823328/blue-bird

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

I'm not the same.

That sweet little girl

twirling in my new

frilly dress.

Dancing in the rain

muddy puddles, a ducky mess.

Playing patty-cake with my newborns tiny hands.

Guiding little sleepyheads off to neverlands.

Watching them from the crowd

as they grew and played

when allowed.

I miss them now

so much,

I wish they could have stayed.

Hard lessons learned.

Heart scars earned.

What once was whole,

now has a hole.

Broken and in pieces

with an ache, a pain

that never ceases.

No, I'm afraid I'll never

be the same.

I'm still writing poetry and I still won't show it to you, but this time you, babe, my love, I saw you at my poetry reading I looked right at you and thought again about the stain on your jacket sleeve and how proud I was that day you let me wear it and how I thought I'd never feel cold again and it was you but your hair was straightened and not pulled back like when she straightened your hair and I kept thinking about how it must've felt nice to have her hands moving through your hair and how could I blame you for enjoying the sensation so much more than one person could do it for you, she might as well touch your dick for you too. I'm sorry I'm sorry no I mean it the same way you did when you said it over and over and over again every time I spent the day waiting for you and I forgave you every time because I still believed we were quilted from the same cloth and stars from the same constellation and cliches from the same hopeful teenager's diary. So I kept reading my poems to you and melted at the sight of your hands so empty without mine clutched in it cover my scar with your thumb so I can be pure and beautiful again let me be authentic again and I can stop pretending I know how to sit through a talk without zoning out without feeling scared that everything I see means my own inadequacy that the ghosts are closing in on me this room getting smaller and me always getting bigger. But you look great I could write poetry about your smile, I've written poetry about your smile, I think the crescent moon was modeled after your smile, and I write a lot of poems but it was you I loved not the poems like some egoistical English major. I wonder if that's how you see me now. And you were there with another girl which is how I knew it wasn't you. I won't be spiteful because you were right I didn't have a reason not to trust you, I just had a reason not to like you because you didn't want me to feel loved enough or you couldn't make me feel loved enough. They are talking and you and you are here and they say we should condense our poetry and mince our words but my emotions are overflowing like those fountains in your room. The turtles! If we had bought one would we have stayed or would I be single mothering it? And you'd be scared to ask about him. And please how is Misty? Please how is she? This anger is so heavy to carry and i know how it hurt you. Love is a limb I wish I could amputate. I walk around with a model of your heart in your pocket but you didn't realize I left you with my full one and put the model back in my chest to beat hollowly. I think it's safer with you anyway.

Slowly killing myself each day to be the person I thought everyone wanted me to be. Now I feel as shallow as my grave. The one my persona dug. And I worry that when I look at the camera, people can see it. The old me I killed. That hides just beneath the surface, underneath what was supposed to be a temporary act, not a permanent play.

My grave. My obituary never saw the light of day.

And I fear the only one who grieved, was me.

We met in 2019, a summer excursion.

I admit I was on the outset reluctant to go. Though, interested and supportive, on subcutaneous, surfacing, level I sensed instinctively that it would be hard. Emotional.

(Ericc Tascott, April 20, 1952 - March 13, 2024)

My husband had told me about him, with great fervor and esteem; how much he had learned from the man, and how he valued living and apprenticing together, creating and selling painted sculptures. Tasting the bohemian artist life, as it were, feeling Ericc had opened a door to a possible life he didn't believe could be made real-- to live solely off of one's artwork.

It's difficult, near impossible, to write on, without giving the impression of arrogance, presumption. To know. And yet...

The foundation, cracking, the traces of art before the stoop, the circle of familiar cats, the apologetic disarray on entry--- The scent of death is not new.

It's in the smell of glue, and paint, and varnish; in the finished and unfinished wood and clay; in the very pulp of paper, once dampened and now dried. It's not a sometimes thing; occasional; or project based. I'd been to other studios. I've lived one. It's a very visceral thing, sensitive, beyond object curiosity. It permeates everything. And I maintain that the working artist knows the lingering smell of Death.

To the art appreciator, those paintings, photos, sculptures, and other tangibles, take on a Life on closure. To the maker, it is as if one more nail in the coffin, one more boulder to the tomb, set loose. The things we make that bury us, in the byproducts of creative thinking-- it's the knowledge that death can creep in at any moment for the Content Creator, the instant he or she losses that momentum of expulsion. Loses out to depression or physical ailment, because in a twist of logic, that unburdening of "dead weight" is a Life affirming process, and when no longer making that "refuse," the Artist is already dying inside.

Going in, I knew he was no longer creating. Parkinson's, my husband told me. I understood the particulars of what that illness entailed, the debilitating involuntary tremors. My grandmother had suffered it. Her handwritten letters to her elder son almost illegible in final years, yet still she wrote, by necessity, unfailingly remarking on her scrawl (przypraszam za bazgroly) until she absolutely could not intelligibly hold thought nor pencil.

...the Dualling of life and death, is ever present, as a question unspoken: How are you ... Doing? I shook his hand. Not an ordinary shake, firm. Held. Our eyes locked, depth, and a cemented understanding: One of us.

Maybe numbers people (accountants, lawyers, bankers, etcetera) have the same sensation of Recognition. I'm sure poets and musicians do. The connection was strong. Painter to painter. He couldn't know, but it's as if we did. Whatever was wired in that handshake went through a lifeline, telepathically. Deuce the details.

I turned aside and fought tears and pride.

He reminded me of my father. He was a father figure to my husband. He hadn't compromised-- in a life full of compromises. He had insisted on Living. The biology of the Artist being to Create content. And when he stopped creating, back in 2019 or prior, he was already dying. I had the foolish notion of understanding something of the phantom pain he was feeling, as the amputation of the archaic vestigial organ of creativity, while he showed us around; where he used to work; what he used to do...

The understanding being that the Death of a Content Creator can come at any moment. The content, meaning, what resides inside the person: the Next.

I slowly leak my innards

Through the sieve of collagen

Holding out my outards

I messily spill my guts

Through the holes in my broken heart

Until those beatings finally stop

I keep my sleeve unrolled

To wear emotions clinging like lint

Easily pet-brushed off like dander

I wax maudlin by burning

An oversentimental candle at both ends

Until the light finally goes out

I live in peace

I go in peace

But I go