Our anniversary.
Celebrated in hot saltwater.
Category: Poetry and Writing
Shell
The Six-Word Memoir
I’ve been very active on one of my favorite web sites lately: http://www.swap-bot.com/ It’s a great place to glean artistic inspiration, meet like-minded individuals, and sign up for (and send) happy mail…usually snail mail. I absolutely love it here.
Lately I’ve started hosting a series of swaps at swap-bot based off of the idea of the Six-Word Memoir (see http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/ for more info!). Essentially you sum up an experience in six words. It can be small or large, specific or illicit. I love the challenge this idea poses and the endless possibilities of only six words.
Embers
She will absorb
That lack-luster sheen
Your reflection of life gone stale
Just feeding her storm
That want to incinerate
Everything into gray, charred to ash
Such a destructive twist, it
Spins within her, only
Held in check by its own limits
These strings are so binding
Defiant but defeated, we endure our own microcosmic hell
Digressing into redundancy
Hoping the embers hold enough heat
To draw fresh conclusions
Or at the very least
Comfort from the twist
But it’s temporary
You know
I just can’t live
Without that playful, dark little twist.
One last look before I tear…
It’s all the same.
It’s always the same.
The grief inside becomes an ache as I
Pull on my face for you, as I
Breathe in this same stale air.
Our lungs are just drenched in it.
All the same,
Oh so dull.
The fed-up feeling
That tugs at my core.
Screaming for fresh blood, new scenery,
A fleeting landscape as we sail across miles. Away.
It all stays the same, but
This tears and it wretches
Gashing new holes, struggling to depart.
Every day a series of disappointing
Unstimulating decay.
So secure. So safe.
But does safety breed satisfaction?
It can’t stay the same.
I rip it apart myself.
And the trail of destruction is the most obscenely,
Deliciously different thing I have ever torn from within.
