Things That Seem Harmless
Your beauty, that seems harmless.
At least sometimes.
A live snake on the coffee table, brought in from the porch by the cat.
The ancient clever house across the street.
Shadows that suddenly swirl.
Your laughter.
It seems so harmless.
A roof made of boulders.
Things inside your body that have never gotten out.
Pins left in hems.
Everything you’ve ever forgotten.
Everything you might remember.
Your empty, harmless voice.
The voice you auctioned off in 1964.
This unidentified squirrel, deceased from an unseen reason.
All unseen reasons.
Hummingbirds with webbed feet.
All made-up things.
Your dreams, your nightmares, your daymares.
Five words you told me on Tuesday.
Tuesday.
Seems perfectly harmless, no?
Things you think you see, but they’re there all the time.
Lost time.
Hidden time.
Words that escape from your shoes and sometimes dance. Moon landings.
Yes, certainly moon landings.
Terrible green velvet dresses.
Your entire wardrobe of green velvet tuxedos.
The gaze I didn’t know you gave to everyone.
Everyone.
Well, no, not everyone.
Grandma’s ring in a pawn shop.
Your sled.
Your entire head.
Every exact fact.
Everything you’re afraid to throw away.
All the things you’ve discarded.
Your handsome words.
The best chairs you’ve ever sat in.
The Stations of the Cross, depicted in ivory.
All subterranean mysteries, including those in the sky.
The Glorious, Sorrowful, and Comical Mysteries of the Rosary.
Cerise, at least sometimes.
Old, unopened bottles of Tab.
Your sister who is not named Eloise.
Eloise is not harmless.
You, in deep slumber.
You, doing pale blue things I don’t know about.
Sweet nothings and sweet somethings.
Photos of you that are not of you.
Your short height.
Your incurable health.
Your fictitious understanding.
Your beauty.
Lilac Time
Lewis is gone, who came to tell me
in the middle of the night
that our lodgepole pine had fallen.
My dear Jane is gone, who vastly preferred
voluptuary to economizer.
And Hank? He’s gone—whose dark lip intrigued me.
His father chewed ice
and spat it at passersby.
Jameson just slid away, the whole time molding
slippery clay into a hollow moon
with his lunatic hands.
In his bedroom closet, Sweet, his cat,
birthed six wild clots of love
bred of her secret nights, while we,
still young,
scrubbed our speechless faces.
Is lilac the word
you can never remember?
I thought so. Don’t worry.
It all will bloom again.
DIANE WALD is a poet and novelist who has published five chapbooks, four full-length poetry collections, and two novels. Her most recent books are The Warhol Pillows (poetry), and My Famous Brain (novel). Her next novel, The Bayrose Files, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing.
Read more by Diane Wald
Flash memoir in Ron Slate’s On The Seawall
Prose poem in The Prose Poem
Short story in jmww