Lavinia Thompson's Blog: Seeking reviewers! , page 4
January 22, 2022
January Writing Prompts 13
Sometimes pieces
don’t realign as envisioned.
Sometimes they crumble
to pile up as dust.
Or they crack and shatter
across the floor.
Maybe they ripped to frays,
left hanging in the gales
but never carried away
when the world moves on.
Or did they splinter
like a wooden door
against a sledgehammer?
It never stood a chance
but it doesn’t mean
it can’t be whole again.
A fulgent coral sky
across barren icy lands
makes spring inevitable,
makes hope incipient,
even when fractured.
Sometimes feeling whole
comes after years of crafting
together minuscule pieces.
After which
no wind, no hands, no sledgehammer
can break you.
They can stand, numinous,
against your furious hues
effulgent against the shadows
in the distance behind you,
that agonizing dead end road
down which you ran blindly
for so many years.
You don’t live there anymore.
Your pieces melted into place
differently than before.
Image by Md Shahinur Islam from Pixabay
January Writing Prompts 12
We are ghosts
of empty tomorrows;
the bleak grey hues
overshadowing the sun
waiting for light
to break through,
waiting for more
than cold coffee
on the dirty counter,
unattended dishes piled up,
laundry scattered,
clean and soiled mixed,
food untouched for days
because nothing seems
to matter anymore.
Merely a shadow
in the unlit room,
curtains blocking out the world.
Sometimes the worst thing
is to open up and look outside
into the world we don’t
want to be a part of anymore
when this is what our life
looks like inside.
Image by NAOKI NISHIMURA from Pixabay
January 17, 2022
January Writing Prompts 11
Dear midnight,
meet my heartbreak
where roads cross
over my weary soul.
Sometimes this dirt road
leaving the city
is my only solace
from memories lingering
on street corners,
kisses by four ways,
embraces beneath bar lights,
laughter echoing down alleys,
brazen rebel hearts,
leather against lace,
bright eyes
and we called it freedom.
Meet where his soul
sometimes crosses mine,
where perhaps he still
thinks of me
driving past fields,
lopsided shacks
long left behind
the way we left us
five years ago.
I wove him into poetry
then tore up the pages.
Blinding summer sunsets,
a romantic glare
blinding me to
what freedom truly was.
Meet where we parted:
the driveway where goodbye
was just a word
and leaving was the only way out,
where that auburn July sun
drenched the prairies in
rage before melting into
indigo sorrow.
I cried for so long.
And the wildflowers
he once picked for me
were left behind
to fend for themselves
long after the hum
of wheels passed on the highway.
Meet where I stood
on some desolate back road
suffocated in darkness
all around me,
longing to become
an evanescent memory
of the woman he loved.
Meet me there so someone
can remind me that
darkness isn’t always
a morose prison.
Sometimes it’s the hours
before a hopeful twilight
brims the horizon
waiting to flood over
waiting to show me
there is as much total freedom
in being alone
as there ever was
while in love.
January 11, 2022
January Writing Prompt 9
To live from the outside
is to drive headlong
into every orange-dusted sunset;
a twisting highway with no
destination in sight
watching towns pass by
and I never know
anything about any place.
I just keep on running.
Is it a waste of time
to drive until you’re crazy?
To speed down a dark back road
without headlights
waiting to crash
but the deadly impact never hits,
so you sit on the roadside
watching headlights
fade on the highway
like a world of normalcy
of which I can never be a part.
It’s to live where wreckage
and heartbreak dwell
for years on end
until the house is in flames.
I stood on the street
before the ruinous skeleton
soot-soaked, smoke-stained,
and never felt more
disconnected
I never felt more
engulfed in agony.
To live from the outside
is to be immobilized within
a period of healing that feels like
looking out from a glass house
shimmering against pastel mornings
after the longest nights end,
after the madness and pain
and longing for death
dissipates with time.
You stand out by that highway
knowing sometimes recovery
isn’t about running away
but about tearing yourself open
to spill like the friscalating horizon
that still awaits you.
Image by Robin Lieck from Pixabay
January 9, 2022
January Writing Prompts 8
It’s a blessing and a curse
that we don’t live forever.
We remain whilend
yet days seem like years, years like days,
and mortality inumbrates the present.
What would it be like,
to disenthrall from fear?
To flee rampant around dreams
like butterflies around wildflowers,
intoxicated on pollen and flight?
Would we paint in
wine colours and pastels
or strokes of lilac and orange?
Could we merely exist
without requiring purpose?
Tell me, what would it take
to simply feel alive
forever?
January 8, 2022
January Writing Prompts 7
Susurrus surrounds
in shadows where
I become an evanescent
fragment of who I used to be.
This shattered glass house
I once called home
now shards glinting
dangerous against stars
and I don’t know which
is sky or floor.
I let these tides
shift and glide and turn.
One cannot abscond
when these changes crack open
beneath a fragile abditory
and the pieces crumble
into the ocean below.
You only drown
until you choose between
a scintillating surface
or an ominous seabed.
The waves will call you to swim;
the bottom engulfs you in obscurity.
And perhaps you flail
when your head is below water.
The air to breath is above.
Keep moving.
Perhaps you learn that
grinding against the tides
pushes you back.
The metanoia begins
when you turn around
and embrace the hands who wish
to return you to calmer waters,
where you know for sure
the stars are overhead
and all that glass
on which you once bled
remains in the sand
your feet will never touch again
and the true tides turn
the moment your hands and knees
collapse to the shore,
and all you must do from there
is walk.
January 6, 2022
January Writing Prompts 6
I dwelt with dreariness,
staring up into blue-grey clouds
wondering if that day
was when I ended things,
immobilized in a wintrous land
where hues of ash never wavered.
I sat with demons at a bottle’s bottom,
drowning in whiskey-drenched screams.
There was never enough
to kill the pain
to obliterate the agony
of a child who never had a chance.
I sought shelter in arms
too distant to encapsulate warmth
into my somber soul,
left screaming “go away”
when all I wanted
was tenderness and patience.
Sometimes the only thing
heard in stone-shaded clouds
were screams of a woman
frigid and fracted,
who wanted nothing more
than to let endlessness
swallow me whole.
Maybe the screaming
ripped open the firmament;
simply a crack where light
began seeping through.
Maybe only scarred hands
have strength to tear cloud frays
to scatter them
across a deadened land.
All I know is that I crawled
until one day I stood,
when I took a step
and then another,
and kept going.
Maybe oblivescence
is nothing more than
a long anguished rout,
a feeble clamber,
towards the realization
that no one can wrap up
my inner child in
warmth and love
except myself,
and no one else can tell her
what she needed to hear:
I will bend swords against
monsters and soldiers
to protect you.
You may remain hidden
beyond castle walls.
Let me fight for us.
Let me skin grey skies
until they’re achingly blue,
until the sun and moon
hang side by side
in dismay at this resilience.
You see, they too thought
we were too moribund
to ever walk back into the light.
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
January 5, 2022
January 4, 2022
January Writing Prompts 4: Surrender
Surrender to the heart
which yearns to be unapologetic.
Let thunder's brontide
awaken recklessness,
rumbles across a horizon,
rain dribbles down glass,
electric flickers stab the sky,
adust like whiskey straight.
Make it 100 proof
for all the times I let
this life tear me down.
Make it 100 proof
despite how he tried
to water me down.
I’ll surrender to every
wild instinct summoning storms,
every rush of rebellion,
every refusal to apologize
for who I am.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
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