Poetry
House Cat
After the prongs of honesty
I threw and you returned,
Pierced our white, underbelly flesh,
We sat in silence as the clock we never hear
Tick-tocked its way to the next moment.
Earlier I had decided to let frankness tumble from my lips
Instead of the routine, dry retreat of truth down
The back of my throat to halt conflict.
My belly bloated from the thorny spikes of unsaid things,
I had no choice.
It’s in my DNA,
That need to appease.
Fired off in my synapses
At the first, pungent whiff of relational decay.
Today, it needed a new pathway.
Afterwards, you retreated to the bedroom
Like a small sparrow,
Wounded by a cat with long claws.
I sat alone in the darkened living room,
The house cat behind the bush licking her paws clean.
Not because I was satisfied with the bitter meal,
But because I had done what should come naturally.
Featured Image by Monica Silvestre @ Pexels
At Dawn
Inky brazen haze
Where thoughts are absent
The strangulating coil
Of restraint.
They wend loosely,
Unfettered,
Whispering veracity.
A ghost purring longings for home
Surreptitiously in your ear.
A place where truth becomes slow-rising light
Filtered through paned glass,
Disassembling one intricate piece at a time.
Fragments of truth deftly hidden
In the luminosity of noonday sun.
Calmness sleepily engulfs anxiety’s weight.
Filter-less mental objects take shape
In ways that are different
Than when they sleep below the surface in full sun.
A time to open-up ribs,
Atone for lost pieces of tide,
Enfold disenchantment,
As if embracing a weeping child.
It will be all right.
Jeannine M. DeHart 