Counting Out Necessity, hour twenty-two
Small simple things, much loved,
1 cup of tea, warm.
2 hours binging a good series,
2 hours of cuddling and tenderness,
4 day weekend spent dozing,
simple, short and sweet.
The End Or Something Like It (Hour 19, A Lowku)
The End or Something Like It
The clock’s incessant ticking
resonates loudly
in my ears. The end is near.
****I literally just invented the lowku by exhausted inattention. While I had planned to pen a haiku, my muddled mind mistakenly reversed the syllabic count of each line. So rather than the syllabically structured 5/7/5 composition of traditional haiku, the lovely lowku is made up of three lines, where lines one and three contain 7 syllables and line two has only five syllables.****
Hour 22 – For my Husband
Prompt Twenty-two – Use the word Tenderness as this hour’s prompt.
For my Husband
You tippy-toe into the room.
Is it very late?
Or very early?
As today meets tomorrow
Or is it yesterday meeting today?
I can’t say.
Bleary-eyed with exhaustion
I lie myself down on the sofa
To catch seventeen minutes of sleep
Before the alarm shrieks again.
You tippy-toe in then,
And thinking me asleep
You pull the blanket up to my chin.
And envelope me in your tenderness.
And fuel the bleary out of my eyes.
I don’t know if you inspire me
It is too early (or too late) for deep thinking.
But I do know,
I do what I do
Because you believe I can.
As you wrap me in your tenderness.
Hour 18 (2022)
Moments of joy
are harder to find these days.
But I’m learning to find them
in small, unexpected places.
Like in rays of sunlight
that are the perfect temperature.
Or in the way a gentle breeze
dances through my hair,
tickling my neck.
Sometimes it’s there
hiding in the quiet
of midday crickets
and fluffy white clouds
that slowly float by,
with no other care.
The harder to find,
the greater the reward.
I just need to look
in small, unexpected places.
Not My People
Not My People
These are not my people.
But I want them to adopt me,
alien child dropped into the
Fundamentalist Christian Wild West.
Glitch. Mistake.
I instinctively knew about
ethnicities other than Indians and White people.
Bread that’s hard to roll into a ball,
other than corn bread.
That thinking differently, if at all,
could be a good thing.
These people tolerate differences,
don’t need more than three guns,
show awareness of climate change,
won’t bully children for intellectual endeavors.
Wrap me in your East Coast Liberal arms.
Sign the adoption papers.
2022 Poem Twelve
Vows (will insert a number later when I can count how many vows I have written)
From now until our obituary we will have each other.
In sickeness and in health,
tied together as one.
I will rest when we are tired.
Even if our head cannot meet a pillow,
we will pause together.
I will figure out how to get us nourishment
when we aren’t able to tolerate the concept of food.
From now until our obituary we will have each other.
In sickness and in health and in sickness,
tied together as one.
When you tell me to brace our body,
I will wear the brace and someday I will learn to not question you.
You pick our mobility aids,
I will withhold society’s judgement.
From now until our obituary we will have each other.
In sickness and in sickness,
tied together as one.
I will hold your hand as we wait for test results.
Make room for each of us to grieve.
And make room for each of us to celebrate.
Most of all,
I vow to keep updating as we go.
One set of vows can’t cover our lifetime of growing and changing together.
Hour 22 – Tenderness – Text Prompt
Dove in hand, my songbird
You sing so sweetly to me
Jealous birdy, oh so needy,
You steal my donut freely
With careful tenderness
As your heart pounds
Fearless as you escape
The cage designed for
Your protection
You pluck my garnet heartstrings
And soar beyond the curtain
To a world far crueler
Than you’ve ever grown in.
Dove, starlet, don’t make me go
And find another birdy
Find your way back here safely
So we can work this out
Dear heart of mine
You’ve flown the coop
Too soon to make it on your own
Caught in a bush of night and lies
Sought by wicked claws.
Touch me
Crying for Mom
Baby’s tears are many
A bottle for food
There is no substitute for the softness
Of Mommy’s breast, or the tenderness
Of Mommy’s touch
Mom enters the room and instinctively
Crying baby starts looking around
Waiting for that familiar smell
Mom walks over takes the baby
Tears are absorbed in Mom’s tender embrace
Hush!!
“Cars and Loads”
Cars and loads,
Now off we go,
Heading to the place we know,
Or probably don’t know.
A million miles to go,
Do as we were told,
A couple of times, I know.
It’s time to do the things we should do.
Not a lifetime to prepare,
A second snap to stare,
We are all so, so aware.
And now its time, time to dare.
.
.
.
Writer: M.E. Flores
Hour22, Image Prompt22