Pandora’s Kin
It is late in the season Or early depending on your viewpoint But it feels late to me Each night I recommit to a day of creativity And each morning I rise still in the mind frame But it takes less and less time With each sun’s rotation Before I give up on it all again It rains, I run, I walk, I sit Late and early get mixed up In between hope and despondency Moving a bit more away from the first And closer to the second As seconds tick to minutes tick to months But there is no lady in the lake Only lampreys Which suck at my soul Trying to loosen it from its moorings Rendering me Invisible Even on days which remain Completely cloudless With nothing to block the light That should light all within its kingdom No more big dreams of starting everything over Instead I look to the smallest of steps forward I pretend to sleep Even though it has been years since My eyes held closed til dawn had stolen forward Chariot arriving furiously in its wake Pretending, though stillness is foreign to me In the hours it should reign Only arriving when cogs and wheels should be keeping pace But now I steady my breath And lock my eyelids Ignore the itch in my right cheek The restless left leg Inhibiting even the sigh that seeks to escape Though it is a fair approximation Of lightening slumber Nothing that would give away my plan The gentlest sunbeams creep closer And closer still Across sun room tile Climbing over threshold to regain their progress Across wooden bedroom floorboards And now Touching the bottom threads of my comforter Rising an inch at a time When I’m certain there are enough rays near Not to miss I begin to snake my hand forward Only to scare the more skittish beams Which rush back to hide in shadowy corners But there, one remains, trembling Holding tight to the woven cover I reach out ever so carefully Without suddenness or shock To gently stroke along its length Thus calmed, it climbs onto my outstretched hand It’s warmth suffuse throughout my arm I bring it in and hold it to me And there, sensing the emptiness It takes up residence within my heart To thaw the frozen landscape Where closest betrayals Had overtaken with hopes to rule
Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had her poetry featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost. Her fiction has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. She is the author of Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, a collection of her poetry for sale on Amazon.
If you enjoyed reading this poem, you might also like these:
You can also find links to all of the articles, stories, fiction and poetry I publish on Medium here. Thanks for reading and for supporting Mental Gecko!
