Nesting

To write, I need to be vulnerable, open to suggestion, yet safe to explore those suggestions.  Living in a place where you don't feel safe, or with someone you don't trust to respect your boundaries wreaks havoc with that process. Escaping it unlocks all kinds of possibilities.

In the following poem notice the edits, as well as the noun choices and alliteration.  Much of my work falls into this form - 4 line stanzas, often 5 stanzas with a story arc. I've deliberately chosen particular words for double meanings.

Spring Cleaning

In the spring,

birds search for bright bits

of lint, hair, threads – human castoffs castoffs of others

to line their nests.

My nest is polluted fouled -

strewn with flakes of your skin,

stained with coffee

infused with cigarette smoke.

The floor is a minefield,

incendiary beneath any step.

The room echos with absence

and screams with accusation.

It is mine to reclaim,

these foreign alien square feet,

though in the emptiness I hear my shudders

and each labored breath.

I’ll open the window -

let the memories escape and dissipate,

rearrange old habits in the closet,

effect my own spring nesting.