his

 

His honeyed voice soothes

My aching psyche

His bright smile provides

Luminosity

His twinkling eyes beg

Curiosity

I run to him on slippered feet and place my palm on his chest.

The steady rhythm of his heart puts my wearied mind at rest.

~Melanie Thomason

2/19/2022

 

Birth

I gave birth today

Not from my barren womb,

but from my heart strong and my soul true

My fingertips gripped the pencil, poised over unlined paper

I had to press down hard to deliver my racing thoughts

and tore a hole right through the middle of the page

But on I wrote

 

When I went to read my creation

I found the letters had shifted into unrecognizable garble

I jiggled the paper to reorganize my reflections

Still the patterns seem to spell no word

Had I been fleeced of original thought?

I shook and waved the crumpled paper more and to my horror

I saw that I was continuously dropping syllables

 

At this rate my poem was sure to perish

as surely as apples that wilt and wither with blight

And so now I’ve had to adopt some sort of ad-lib

Some off the cuff step-child and pass it off as art

~Melanie Thomason

2/19/2022

Sweatshirt

How wicked of a thought must you have to jostle a mind already organically filled with evil?

What is your terrible longing?

Piercing butterflies to save and study beauty you will never possess?

Plucking feathers from wee birds because you will never fly?

The truth is no matter how much you ply yourself with alcohol and other forms of courage I will always call your bluff.

You hit me in the face with your fistful of bad words but just what do you think you shall inflict on me with your vulgarity?

You are as threatening as a damp sweatshirt.

I am not afraid of you.

 

~Melanie Thomason

8/31/21

creatures such as we

Another murdered midnight

under a starless sky

The words between us hang heavy

like the weight of the secrets we keep

Love is a cruel deception

for creatures such as we,

living in perpetual drought

If I could only tell you the toll it takes

being one of your lost causes

I hate it, though neither of us is innocent

The truth echoes among us

When I close my eyes the red rope tightens

I think of all the things we do in the dark

the silence sings as the rain starts

~Melanie Thomason

8/5/21

Untitled short story

She was dying so slowly from the poison that she never even felt ill.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she had never felt well but she just didn’t have a point of reference.

If one is always in the darkness do they miss the light? Even if they’ve never experienced it?

Yes, yes they do.  She had dreams and fantasies of course but never the energy to even attempt them.  Her imagination was the only part of her that was truly alive and reading fueled her.

She at the moment was living a stationary life, too weak and limp to even get herself out of bed.  But in her mind she was hiking up mountain trails, riding wild horses and visiting big cities with immense skyscrapers she only ever read about.

She heard the comings and goings in the rest of the house and wanted to know what was happening, maybe even be included for once and she tried to call out but found herself too hoarse to manage more than a whisper.  A voice fades from lack of use.

She once again found comfort by carefully unfolding the tattered and yellowed piece of stationery that she always kept on her.  Within its creases she spied the tiny pill, its presence reassuring.  She still had some control and when she was ready she would go on her own terms.

 

~Melanie Thomason

7/24/21

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Smoky shadows

hungrily lick the tunnel walls

as flickering flames dance ‘round and ‘round

their unwitting victims with skin blistered and charred

singing,  “ashes, ashes they all fall down”

•

in our haste to find the light at the end of the tunnel…

we forgot to read the small print.

 

 

Photo by Anthony Rao on Unsplash

 

~Melanie Thomason

2/28/2021

witness

gentle gloomy sky

a compassionate witness

to my fragile state of mind

~Melanie Thomason

1/23/21

veil

weak winter sunshine

does little to pierce the veil

this mourning morning

~Melanie Thomason

1/23/2021