Testing Time
Tiny, timid, trivial toddler tests Transcendent Time. Time teases. Time taunts. Time tramples.
Tired, trapped, torn, toddler touches time timidly. Time ticks. Time tocks. Troublesome Time travels, taking Time’s terrestrial treasure. Toddler turns to Twenty. Time takes Twenty to tough terrain. Twenty tries to tolerate Time’s treachery. Time terrorizes. Twenty tumbles, twists, ’til Twenty turns to timeworn Terrestrial, traveling towards Time’s tomb.
Tormented, tortured, transfigured, Terrestrial’s trial terminates. Time triumphs totally.
Last Time
I said it was the last time, last time
But I’m addicted to the rush and the sweat
On your skin as we dance in the dark
Stolen glances as his hand holds mine
All the while knowing that those fingers traced
The curve of your chest down to your hip bone
While we lay and wonder how we’d made such a mess of things
How we kept making such a mess of things
I said it was the last time, last time
But I'm wound up tight and the only way
To unravel is in your arms
Like peeling off layers of damp winter clothes
You lay me bare and I shiver
Unsure if it's from the cold or anticipation
And we know there's only one way to find out
But I wish I could let this go
Because I said it was the last time, last time
All the vows I ever made are broken
And the pieces are getting so small that soon
They'll be nothing more than dust
Just once more?
"I said it was the last time down the slide"
"Aw, but I want to keep playing."
"It's getting late, let's go home."
"Just once more?"
"I said it was the last time I would let you win."
"And yet somehow, I'm winning?"
"Beginners luck."
"Just once more?"
"I said it was the last time I watched this movie with you."
"But it's my favorite."
"But we've seen it 100 times."
"Just once more?"
"I said it was the last time."
"Just once more...
Please?"
Babbage
There are days I all but balk
At the way the feed turns my words to chalk
Lost to the wayward whims of algorithm babbage
As if they were nothing but stinking cabbage
Washed and gone, pray tell:
Will my work ever make it off the carousel?
If you reading sense my consternation,
In the sky of my mind there hangs a constellation
Language painted to free me of the humdrum
Non-exposure from our writers’ online conundrum.
—
@bykaileyann
HEDERAREADS.COM
Firefull
/ˈfī(ə)r//fo͝ol/
the feeling one gets when their emotions brew beneath their skin yet they stand proudly and boldly, unfazed and cold, while a fire stirs deep inside their veins, threatening to grace their fingers and light the world on fire. It’s dangerously powerful due to the relaxed nature of the bearer as they are in complete control, even if they feel as though the fire is consuming their insides, but in reality their soul is sparking to life triggered by the imbalance and unease the individual feels around them.
Medicated and Motivated
I don’t know if I’m good. The writing I produce, a quiet look into the heavily medicated mind: when you’re addicted to Xanax, the chalkboard welcomes nails screeching down it.
Likewise, I want to stir the internal demons, lean over the pottery wheel and bring them home to mom.
Prose was a gateway. I am a writer, addicted to feelings. My dad asked me, when are you done with a poem? I said: when it kicks me in the stomach. Hard.
I thought recently: what can I contribute to the writing world? I was applying to a writers conference. As whiskey sloshed onto my keyboard, I pulled together some pieces I’ve written for Prose. I pressed submit.
I guess all I can keep doing is keep going. But for me? Prose raised the curtains, turned my imagination into words, into typing, into my story.
White girl, wino woes. That’s what I’m doing here.
But maybe that’s my story, and maybe that’s my medicine.
