Flash fiction (24): The tailor

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo.

Travellers

It’s comical and tragic how she floats between walls, the silent watcher becoming the studied, the scarlet magician defeated. These lines were painted long before her arrival, their essence already etched into the red soil made solid. Dust is all they know, and dust keeps smothering the spaces in between thought, the gaps of knowledge covered anew, as paper evens cracks. The tailor arrived yesterday, carrying his dispirit trapped in a glass jar, empty except for a listening ear. A stub of gristle marked the removal, but I did not flinch. He eyed me curiously, seeking evidence of my fear, my repugnance, yet I gave him nothing. I watched him go, the hours of travel drawn on his back, blank on his face. I did not think of him again until I heard the cry. The night split in two.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 6, 2019

A Poem a Day (98): Quiet

Written for JD Mader's 2minutes go. 

Quiet

Here,

There are no words,

No interruptions;

Save for this stillness there is

Nothing but the muffled snore

Of a jet cat snoozing amid even steps

Of two hands, ever-counting ways to sneak

Around this quiet to chime a disturbance.

Humming, the squat fridge joins in, bringing

A rhythmic design to the evening.

Outside, garden voices scoop up in a swarm,

Bee-like, phrases mixing into white noise.

My pen top scrawls across the table to a stop

And I roll a blackberry idly, inhaling

Coffee’s sense of musty earth. This time is

Precious, still, and I am at rest, finally.

Upstairs spills the stagger of a distant cough,

Reminding me of the crowd I am

Escaping.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 6, 2019

A Poem a Day (97): Figurehead of a bow

Figurehead of a bow

  

I will bleed

between

waking

Until this sodden bed resembles a

                                        floating sea,

Merlot, without the heady

scent.

I shall dine like a queen

             on my bones,

prised free of flesh, 

       picking.

And in my fists I will see the final

stage –

         my re-emergence from

stasis and quiet, 

                   heady in

my mask of a thousand

                                 faces.

I am a figment, chiselled

in a distant memory,

a nod to the ages

already fled, bled and

battered down

to a dusty heel,

Once moulded,

now steeped

in foul

disaffection.

I need The Repeat,

                       the Want and the Scold,

And in this parting I will not lose

shape.

I can recraft myself as I have done before,

a

zillion

times before

you were even

born.

My blood weighs heavy, 

                               bonding

                       to the bed

            like jelly –

an irreverent tomb for the

self.

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Copyright Vickie Johnstone, May 9, 2018

A Poem a Day (96): Moon

If you fancy writing some flash fiction or poetry, and getting/giving feedback, or just reading other people's creations, head over to JD Mader's 2minutesgo website. It’s a great place to go and write whatever is in your head. Cheers.

Moon

It’s a sound and a smell, unraveling,

The beginning of it all, unstaged,

A ring of a bell, an iced knell,

A silencing of words held in stasis.

The reconfiguration torn, time

Spends itself in a reordering of mime,

Chaos reminisced, and so it stops

Still, a grin marking skin pulled

Tight; this sense of ages spun,

Reborn in the morning, figure none.

We all begin to rebegin amid waste,

A mind creeping, begging to explain,

Eager to foul, dismembered to fall.

She cannot explain, she cannot see it.

We are existence twisted, left, lone,

Seeking a guide without a true path,

And in finding one we call it home.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, June 8, 2019

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