Prompt from BlueJay Prompt Journal: What never mattered, anyway?

Prompt 17:

Somewhere in northern lousiana

but farther south than I’m willing to admit –

 

there’s a house with a dusty rose bar stool

that has had four dozen poems written about it

and a drawing of a monkey holding a unicorn

on faded newsprint paper – in charcoal far too

perfect to have been crafted by whim.

 

Together they hold on to everything that is left

of the person I was simultaneously most proud

and least proud of being – wrapped up in empty

bags that held kona coffee at one point – but smell

of pistachios – because that’s just how things in this

place were. They followed the rules of reality –

 

but were somehow still part of something entirely different.

It was in that house that you told me – to follow my dreams

and fuck the expectations thrust upon me. Where you said

you’d forever be my artist if only I could continue to write.

 

And now you’re back but the house isn’t and my eyes

swell with tears I don’t know how to explain. And you are

indeed my artist – but even that does not feel like

 

enough.

 

-M. Rene’