| S’agapo
Let me die beside you in your yellow morphine-silence while I bear these wintry thoughts- The puttings-on of daily camouflage that yields me sunless where your cheek will no longer be warmed, your damp lily skin. I’ll brew my mountain tea serve the eggs over easy with hushed screams on Sunday mornings. The vigilant walker is slinking in, light beneath a doorway. Soon your lids will kiss the shade of lashes to lashes forever shut. I am the last who’ll cradle your palms before you’re free like a happy magpie. So listen my lovely while I recite our secret tales in your unhearing ear. The very stories you shared with me when evenings heard the olive trees arms extended rattling my only window. This hospice space, this sickly mattress cries for a rock-a-bye bounce, to sing the songs of blackbirds to impede your runaway tears. No one will disrupt our sacred soiree and you will teach me how to reach the end of time, as I hold my baton in the violet sky. |
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| Carol Lynn Grellas |
| Carol Lynn Grellas is a Northern California-based writer, where she attended Santa Clara University as an English major. She is the author of two Chapbooks: "Litany of Finger Prayers", soon to be released from Pudding House Press and "Object of Desire", forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She has been widely published in magazines and online journals, including most recently, MSU Great Falls Literary Guild: Writings from the River, The Storyteller Magazine, Chanterelle's Notebook, The Hiss Quarterly and Flutter. She has published one full length collection of poems titled, "I’m Packing Things for Heaven". Carol Lynn lives with her husband, five children and a blind dog named Ginger, who inspire much of her poetry. www.clgrellas.com |
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| Shadow Puppet
I thought you should know, what is was like to be alone without you. How there was no one there to rub my back or breathe soft words down the nape of my neck like the wind blowing pollen across a verdant meadow. Every noise beyond midnight became enormous, until I was sure an ogre roamed the hallways in your absence. Silence disturbed me at 3:00 am, while I woke to a snoreless quiet. Half the bedclothes remained frozen and pulled back just as you’d left them, in a sad but orderly kind of way. When the alarm broke, the whole room quivered and you weren’t there beckoning me close for one last nuzzle before taking on the day. When I stood near the window, in my lace gown with veils of light behind my silhouette and wafts of air turning the hem, no one ogled, telling me how beautiful I was. |