Prompt: The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image.
I don't know if I'll be able to finish out this NaPo, since post-Covid recovery fatigue is all too real, but I guess I'll try. Rusty, out of practice, but anyway.
THE THINGS SHE LEFT BEHIND
Caffeine. Ca-ffeine. Ca-ca-ca-caff-ei-ne. Ca-ca-ca-co-phe-ine. Ca-ca-ca-ca-co-pho-neme. Tension headache. Clamour. The noise in my head rings like the muted brr-brr-brr of the old red telephone in the childhood house where lived the child who dreamed the castle who feared the dark who became the I that now lives in the bomb shelter inside my head that I built. Phone. Ca-co-phone. Ca-co-pho-ny. Did my grandmother hear the same, watching the world with hooded eyes, sunken into herself by the mutant cells that would eventually mutate her life away? Ca-co-pho-ny. Ca-co-pho-ney. She had an eye for the real, for the phoney. Quality gemstones, quality food, quality people – she saw. She knew.
Did she know the day I combed out her kitten-soft white hair would be the last time I saw her in her own bed, before cancer caged her in the hospital? The day the text message came, the evening of that 3-hour taxi ride home after work as night fell over the world and curtained her eyes, she defied the darkness just long enough so I could say goodbye. She waited. She knew I would come. When I was thirteen, she told me, "You have phoenix lobes – your earlobes are wide. Earrings will look good on you." I wore her love like earrings, an invisible adornment - private, precious, secret. Something only she and I could see. In that dark still antiseptic room with only my father in attendance, her ghost-fingers brushed my ears as I slept dreamlessly in a distant bed – a last farewell as her spirit evaporated like mist in the dawn. For a moment, the cacophony in my head ceases, stilled by the gentle sway of unseen earrings.
13 comments:
This is just so evocative. I can feel your connection.
This is so moving and tender. Phoenix ear lobes. To be treasured.
Oh Shuku. Such dear, dear images... simply brilliant.
Lord, you brought it home! The first stanza is my favourite with the alliterations. Perhaps I am a seer who needs coming out - I read the word cacophony yesterday :)
Shuku, so good to be reading you again! Written with so much love...very evocative.
This is class apart piece of writing! The images palpate! Shuku, so glad to see you back this year. Hope you are doing fine. <3
This is marvellous, Shuku Li. So much love! "She had an eye for the real, for the phoney. Quality gemstones, quality food, quality people – she saw. She knew." My grandma too! What is happening to us that such skills are now useless and gone? I also love this: "I wore her love like earrings". Just touching. You bring her back.
This is just stunning.
I am especially enamored of:
"kitten-soft white hair"
and "I wore her love like earrings."
I really enjoyed the rhythmic opening of caffeinated wordplay and the movement of the poem. I had never heard of phoenix lobes nor that they are good for earrings. That's going to stick with me. I love the idea of earlobes as flaming wings.
beautiful, and haunting ~
As always your ear for the sounds of language is wonderful. Such a special connection, one to be treasured always.
Shuku, You took my breath away with this poem. The contrasting sounds/shapes of "lives in the bomb shelter inside my head that I built" and "kitten-soft hair" made me want to be reverent in the poem's presence. It felt like I was watching a sacred ceremony--beautiful. The "invisible earrings' will stay with me.
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