M.K. Lee's Blog: Telling Tales, page 69

Pale

Sometimes people watching gets you into trouble. You notice all kinds of things; things you aren’t supposed to. The people you are watching, they are changing. But into what? Are you next?

So you’re standing in the queue for the checkout, clunky red basket in hand and bouncing off of your thigh in semi-impatience. There’s only one person in front of you but whatever they’re buying seems to be taking an age to be scanned.

Biting down the sigh you want to expel from your throat, you ...

Interlude

We slept there.
On the stripped wooden floorboards
That left tracks of splinters in our knees, and across our backs.
We laid there until the sun rose high,
Not looking forward, not pining to claw time back.

We lived in that moment.
Both knowing without acknowledging
That the morning had to come.
And when it did, this would all be over,
Our brief but perfect interlude was done.

© M K Lee

Waiting For The Right Time

It isn’t fair, Evan thinks, staring down at Tom laid pristine white in a hospital bed, willing himself to concentrate on the slightest evidence of his chest rising up and down. Tom’s the baby of the family, eight years younger than Evan is himself, and all Evan can think staring down at him then, is that he’s failed him for letting this happen.

It’s beyond not fair, he adds, eyes closing in anguish at the sight of the apparatus set around the head of that bed, proof that Tom’s only there ...

Raife and Dexter Are Getting Married

Monachopsis

There is a shadow that has followed me from the moment I was born.
I think it watched me delivered by knife, full of scorn,
Knowing full well I wasn’t meant for this world,
Just a foolish mistake, an unwanted girl.
It followed me home from hospital, band about wrist,
Smudged and unnamed, as if to say, ‘who wants this?’
And as I grew, it came along too,
A constant companion, the one thing always true,
A shadow that announces, You Don’t Belong,
You were never meant to be here, your very being ...

A Restless Heart

(Chapter 25)

Epilogue

The campus of Xavier’s university was far quieter than Tyler thought he’d ever seen it in the almost-year it had been since Xavier had started work. Typically at this time when he waited for Xavier, Tyler had to keep the windows up to drown out the noise of students rushing back and forth. But with only about a week to go until the end of the semester, Tyler sat in peace. His arm rested on the open window as he scrolled through his tablet to kill some time, Ty...

More Deserving

I used to love you.
Your laughter used to be the soundtrack to my days,
Bringing sunshine to the sourest of moods.
Your thoughts made me a better person,
Helping me seek out a kinder way to be.
Your ability to turn everything into an adventure,
Be it buying milk,
Or climbing three peaks on a blustery Sunday morning,
Made all of life that much more exciting.
And I would wake by your side
Knowing joy about whatever was going to come my way.
Your laughter is still beautiful,
A warmth to it that...

Marxalene

She sits on a cold stone step.
Talking to herself because there’s no one else to hear.
Looking at a face in her compact that she doesn’t recognise, that no one sees –
And if no one sees, how could you ever disappear?
She wears a pink cable-knit sweater,
Tattered and frayed. Back to front, inside out.
But there’s no one there to tell her,
And no reason or occasion to care about.
She views the world behind pink-tinted sunglasses,
Bewildered eyes widening on all she sees.
When did she cease to ...

Unseen

Thoughts on poetry interpretation

Poetry is such a subjective thing, isn’t it? You can find meaning in someone else’s words that another reader will feel no connection to, or they will be hit in the gut by a line that you have no reaction to at all. And that’s a good thing; we all live our lives and experience things in different ways, so it’s only to be expected that things will resonate with or appeal to us all differently.

That isn’t to say we don’t write poetry to connect with other people, because of course we do. Who ha...