The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: BED

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Kat (who's gotten into Insta-poetry lately!) at Kathryn Apel for Roundup.

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann. I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

Here are January's prompts: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

BED
For 2 1/2 years I lived with my family of origin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where my father worked as the administrator of King Faisal's Specialist Hospital. (I'm told his photograph still hangs on the wall!) That time impacted me in many, many wonderful ways. But not all of it was wonderful...


Photo by Annie Spratt on UnsplashBed
Once in the land of red sand and goats
a girl sat stranded on a ship in the center of a purple room
floor an ocean of roachesswelling, cresting, roiling
her four-year-old heartpitching, heaving
breath hitching –need to pee need to pee need to pee
how much longer before she learns to swim?
- Irene Latham <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } </style> <br />-->