Tag: guilt
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Obscene
Obscene emerged from a moment of enforced solitude in a room I did not choose but had to occupy. I tried to honor its silence, but my breath—wet, rhythmic, insistent—kept happening. It wasn’t mine. It wasn’t anyone’s. It was a fact, and it offended. I realized then that breath, stripped of metaphor, is a kind…
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The Bullet
In that living momentthe bullet goes right by me—and in between all my prayersand my eternal gratitude — the child behind me dies. “Why did it spare me and not him?”,I think over and over again—counting the lifetime of wishesthat now will never come true for him.—It goes right by me—penetrating present and future— —dreams…
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Wash
The white light of my bathroom reaches down through the steam,breaks yellow through the shower door.I scrub my skin, try to scratch loose all the sour, stinging memories inside,hope the grime would disappear in the porous mat under my feet.The steam flows like a host of ghosts into the vent fan- leaves behindonly the face…
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Duty Free
The van to the Cayman airport hits every pothole,shook every bone. I felt the ride in my teeth.My Dad bought some duty free Johnny Walker,a logwood trinket, a gift for his second set of kids.. A siege of harbor cranes are bobbing in the sway,waiting for the moon to dig its way into the sand.The…