The Bluebird Word

An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

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At the Heart of It

29 September 2024 /

Nonfiction by Sandra Marilyn

Lying in the bed next to you, the summer breeze softly poofing the curtains, the night is so quiet I can hear time moving by without us. My head on your chest. My ear to your heart that beats with the consistency of waves stroking the sand. I want to see inside you. I want to understand how it feels to live inside your body, to see how you manage the life that was fashioned by the uniqueness of your experiences, as different from my own as another language.

Another night voices with edges so sharp they could slice soft belly skin. All my fears, losses, demands, unfilled chasms, unjustified expectations, thicken the air that is already crowded with the sounds of every woman who ever cried before us in the rooms of this antique house. Women in long skirts moaned their sorrow faintly to harmonize with my own. My longing collapses me. Your heart is as closed as your rigid face. Your body backs away from my touch.

Another day you walk through the door after entertaining the neighbor’s blind cat and voluntarily washing the pots and pans they left behind when they rushed out to catch a plane. You sing a high-pitched nonsense song to the silly wag-tail dog, who listens with tall ears. You are gathering your tools to work in the sidewalk gardens you have created just for the joy of passers-by. Your heart is so big I wonder if it will burst through and float away, too huge to be contained. A surreal orb valiantly competing with the sun.

And today I sit in the darkened to gray room in the cardio wing of the hospital listening to the forever buzzing and clicking of the machines that will assess the competency of your heart, the viability of your life. The technician sits at a slight angle between you, reclining on the table, and the monitor where the graphs are changing every second, a festive march of flashing neon colors. Your heart is beating a percussive background in sync with the lightshow on the screen. I shift my chair to see the images over the shoulder of the technician, the images that have no meaning to me beside the riveting spectacle of their color and movement.

And then she finds exactly the right position on your chest and there it is. There is your heart, magnified and magnificent, pulsing on the screen. A splendid red-brown muscle. Squeezing, opening, squeezing, opening, squeezing, opening with a sensuous loyalty.

I was presented with the most precious thing, the most personal thing you could offer me. The very essence of your being, of your spirit, exposing itself to me. I remember the years of needing to see you better, to grasp your true meaning, to see inside your heart. And here in this room hidden away from the street noise and the sunshine, and the people forever grasping for happiness and meaning, I could see inside your heart.

As you lay almost sleeping, hypnotized by the sounds, soothed by the darkened room, unable to see what I saw on the screen, unaware of my emotional journey into your heart. My hand on my own heart, tears gathering, I had never felt closer to you, never loved you more.

In a world of isolated people, Sandra Marilyn cherishes the love that has sustained her. This love has been sending its roots deeper and deeper for decades and yet there is still more to learn, more to feel.

Read more of Sandra’s flash nonfiction essays on The Bluebird Word from October 2022 and June 2024.

footprints on snow covered ground in drone shot
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Footwriting

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Russell Rowland

Hand it to the blank slate
of new snow—entire days could be written on it.

There’s plenty of page for me
and the child, with her closer-spaced footwriting.

If it’s a long walk we take, and we turn
to look behind, we discover
we wrote exactly that: “Love took a long walk.”

The tiny fieldmouse’s penmanship
is a fine hand, its thin tail writing a narrow line;
correct footprint punctuation—“I’m

easily overlooked, and thank you very much.”

A snowshoe hare leaves a lot of white spaces,
scrawling “Fox alert!” in haste.

Ethereal deer have a streamlined logo. It reads,
“No comment.”

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Magnificat, is available from Encircle Publications.

red flowering tree
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Clare’s Boots

1 September 2024 /

Nonfiction by Julie Lockhart

I’d never admit in public that it’s OK to benefit from someone else’s hardship, but the black leather Italian boots my friend with cancer recently gave me, make me giddy. Clare received a terminal diagnosis last fall. I wandered around in a shock of sadness for days. She’s doing chemo to keep some of the most horrible symptoms at bay and is responding well.

I visit Clare before Christmas in the new, one-level home that she and her husband quickly bought after the diagnosis. Clare’s elegant taste shows in the attractive décor, open floor plan and view of a well-landscaped garden with forested hills in the background. While we chat, Clare rests on the comfortable, yet chic white couch with colorful patterned throw pillows. She’s thin and pale, yet happy to see me. A young woman helper decorates her Christmas tree. I notice a plentiful pile of gifts awaiting placement under the tree and the arrival of her family. Clare’s husband, Sam, is preparing their dinner, and I wonder how he’s holding up. He looks tired.

Clare is wearing a classy black two-piece warm up, with red piping and a bronze zipper. I love her haircut, shorter on one side, with the rest of her brown hair sweeping across her nicely chiseled features. Clare shares about family visits, making amends, and doing what she can to enjoy the life she has left. My heart swells to witness her strength.

Our conversation moves to the things she can’t wear anymore. She lifts a swollen ankle for me to see and mentions she’s looking for someone who wears size 8.5 shoes. My hand shoots up like a schoolgirl. She leads me into her well-organized closet filled with sophistication reflecting years as a successful businesswoman.

Turning to a floor-to-ceiling shelf, she starts pulling out shoes and boots—all designer. I’ve never spent that kind of money on footwear. I step into three pairs of casual sandals, and check to make sure she wants me to have them. Then she pulls out the Italian boots. My belly flutters with glee as I slip them on. They fit perfectly. Smooth black leather envelops my foot, with a low heel, quilted boot fabric rising up my leg, leather again at the top, and a buckle in back—mid-calf height. Perfect. I don’t want to appear greedy for more, so I put the sandals and boots in a paper bag she has given me and express my thrill and gratitude.

When I get home, I don my skinny jeans and pick up the boots to look closer. They’re lined with a silky-feeling plaid fabric. I pull both on, run my hands down each, and walk out of the closet to show them off to my husband. He loves them too. Later that evening, we head out to dinner, and I again put on the cozy boots. Walking from the parking lot down the street to the restaurant, I picture myself looking stylish, like I’m taking something of Clare’s essence with me—her big heart with an ethos of right action and generosity, especially for kids’ causes. In her boots, perhaps I can walk a little closer to understanding and supporting her journey.

I wonder why I’ve never bought myself nice boots like this. I experience delight with every step and in every place I go. Spending my shopping time in consignment and discount stores, I scour everything for a good deal, even though my mother taught me to love designer clothes. A few lean years in my career led me to frugal spending habits. Yet my finances in retirement no longer require that I be so stingy with myself. I imagine myself boot shopping, and wonder when things in the downtown stores go on sale. Maybe it’s time to loosen up and buy myself nicer attire regardless of discounts.

With the holidays behind us, I make a quick visit to give Clare a poetry book that I hope she and her husband will find meaningful. I hesitate to put the boots on, and choose something else, not wanting to flaunt what she could no longer wear. She looks radiant when I walk in, like she’s gotten her vitality back. I observe the loving interaction between Clare and Sam. He looks good, too—brighter, with a big smile.

The three of us launch into a short but deep conversation about what’s important in life. Sam says, “No bullshit, every moment is precious.” Agreeing, I can see that the two are growing through this difficult time together—with grace and caring. The love between them sings so sweetly. It’s true that we never really know what tomorrow will bring. Looking from one to the other as they talk makes me grateful to witness glimmerings of their process.

I am about to get up to leave when Clare asks for a favor. “Of course,” I respond.

Clare wears a sheepish grin before asking. “You know those boots I gave you? Well, my ankles aren’t swollen anymore, and I’m wondering if I can get them back? I have athletic shoes, but nothing for my nicer clothing.” My heart sinks into my belly for a brief moment—oh those beautiful boots. Yet a few seconds later, I feel elated that she has experienced physical improvement—enough to wear her Italian boots again. Clare apologizes for wanting them back.

Smiling, I say “Absolutely. I will bring them over tomorrow.”

This morning I again slip on the boots that give me such pleasure. I take a deep breath in, with an intentional outbreath of letting go. Material things don’t mean anything next to the treasure of Clare’s friendship and trust in me during this difficult journey. I can buy my own boots. I pull them off one by one, run a little shoe polish over their surface to cover some scuff marks, and slide my feet into my consignment shop clogs.

Julie Lockhart loves an adventure in wild places. Her essays have appeared in The Journal of Wild Culture, bioStories, Feels Blind Literary, Women on Writing Essay Contests, and Minerva Rising. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Julie lives in Port Townsend, WA. Find her online at: julietales.com.

Photo by Niclas Lundin on Unsplash

The Big Dipper

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers

This unseasonably tropic night in Oregon in June, fir and spruce trees
so thickly interwoven, barely enough space between branches
for shadow, let alone the glass teeth of stars, and I am orbited back
to one lime Jell-O and orange cream popsicle summer,
another unseasonable June, air thick as guttural slurs,
when everyone in all five boroughs flipped on their air conditioners
at once, sucking the power dry as thistle, lights dowsed in the great
28-hour black out, and New York City became a meadow again,
a pristine prairie, the streetlamp and skyscraper bruised sky
brighter than the red and green blinking signals of jet planes
that thunder-growled low over us from nearby JFK every night,
brighter than the scarce fireflies already flickering on extinction,
my daddy and me sweating and swatting mosquitoes
on the two-chair porch, he teaching me about the stars,
his hands spread above us thumb-to-thumb,
the rest of his fingers upright to frame the constellations,
and there he hung the Big Dipper for me,
the Big Dipper with its long ladle handle and rectangular bowl,
and perceiving this mystical silhouette for the first time
was a kind of epiphany, with my daddy retelling the many sagas
of the Great Bear Ursa Major from indigenous cultures
around the world, chronicling the true accounts
of how in our own nation this constellation
saved the lives of many slaves
who followed its stars north to freedom,
and I understood how our stories,
back to the beginning of man,
are made of such fragile connections,
dot to dot to dot, twinkling beacons of meaning,
how imagination is part dream,
part real-life experience,
that we can all slake our thirsts from this well,
dipperful by dipperful,
so that each time I spy the Big Dipper in the sky now
it is also the tender tale of a father and a daughter,
his patience and our laughter,
so much laughter I still feel its pulse
orbiting the fatherless galaxy of my heart.

Lana Hechtman Ayers, architect of the “Severed Sonnet,” has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Her ninth collection is The Autobiography of Rain (Fernwood Press, 2024).

Carousel by Cheryl Sadowski

Farewell, in black and white

1 September 2024 /

Nonfiction by Cheryl Sadowski

We rode the Central Park carousel all summer. By winter, the painted horses and gilded carriages stood still. To be part of B’s life in the suburbs is what mattered more than anything now. Arrangements were made, boxes packed, and on a dishwater day in January, the moving truck rolled down West 58th Street with my meager belongings.

I spent the last night in my empty apartment alone, lying on an air mattress staring at electric outlets. I listened for the familiar, persistent clang of the trash chute, the groan of pipes. Oddly, nothing. Only black silence and the dim glow of barren white walls. New York City seemed intent upon my leaving without a nod. Across the courtyard rows of windows darkened and blurred, and eventually I fell asleep.

Snow fell all night, thick and gauzy as cotton candy. I woke in the mauve morning light to find the windows frosted over. I threw on clothes and boots, grabbed my coat, and stomped through meringue drifts toward Central Park. Inside the park, sienna tree limbs bowed beneath white icing and black streetlamps tipped their tall, snow top hats. This was no cold, curt goodbye, but farewell on the most elegant and grandiose scale. The city had seen me after all, and she made sure I knew.

I spun around, eyes watering, and cleared off a park bench to sit down. Life with B. could wait an hour, or two.

Cheryl Sadowski writes about art, books, landscape, and nature. Her essays, reviews, and short fiction have been published in Oyster River Pages, The Ekphrastic Review, Vita Poetica, After the Art, and other publications. Cheryl holds a Master in Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Northern Virginia.

green leaf plant
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Impossible Love

1 September 2024 /

Nonfiction by Leslie Lisbona

Mom and I were talking. “I know what you mean,” she said. I didn’t have to explain much and somehow she understood. She got me in a way no one else did. She used to say, recalling Oscar Wilde, “Take away all my necessities and give me only luxuries.” But for me, having this mom—my mom—was everything. I didn’t need anything else but her.

I was unmarried and about to turn thirty. My boyfriend lived in Mexico, and if I married him, which everyone wanted, I would have to leave her and live there.
Mom and I sat side by side on the couch. I held Paul Auster’s book, Leviathan, on my lap. We had both just finished reading it. “I want to go to the Strand during the week,” I said.

“I’ll meet you there after work,” she said.

We both sighed simultaneously, and this made her laugh.

With my toe, I pushed the ashtray a few inches over on the coffee table. It sat unused and shiny since she had quit smoking. Still, her asthma came suddenly sometimes, and the furniture had a faint smell of cigarette smoke. She examined her nails and looked disappointed with them.

“Shall we go to a movie together?” she half-whispered.

“Yes!” I said, and I reached for New York Magazine to do research. I found My Fair Lady in the city.

“Let’s go now!” she said.

I ran upstairs to get ready. I felt like I was five and someone had handed me an ice cream cone. Afterwards, on the drive home on Queens Boulevard, we sang “I could have danced all night” as we both looked straight ahead.

It wasn’t long after this that I lost her—with no warning. Her not being with or near me was inconceivable. I married a year later, someone I really loved and who lived nearby. We have two grown sons. But the luxury of having someone who understands me so deeply remains elusive.

Leslie Lisbona has been published, most recently in Wrong Turn Lit, The Bluebird Word, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. In March, she was featured in the New York Times Style section. She is the child of immigrants from Beirut, Lebanon, and grew up in Queens, NY.

green potted plant beside window
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House Plants Lament

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Peter A. Witt

Potted I sit on the windowsill,
like a canvas painted with sunlight,
weaving patterns on my outstretched leaves,
it’s a good life, but I envy the vibrant
garden that grows outside, where
plants hear the twilling of house finches,
the buzzing of honey bees, and feel the cool
of early spring breezes, as arrowheads
of Sandhill Cranes migrate north
from their Texas winter homes.

Once my keeper carried my potted home
out to the patio on a rain-clouded day
where a gentle caress from nature’s hand
bathed the soil around my roots.

I drew the pure water into my stems,
it was refreshing after my usual diet
of salt-filled, chlorinated water drawn
from the kitchen tap. Alas, my roots
were never bathed this way again.

My owner thinks I’m happy; she sees
no bugs, no rot of my roots or mold,
no diseases, but she does not know
I feel like a prisoner in a gilded cage;
she thinks of me as nothing more
than a potted house plant with no
ambition to be something more.

Peter A. Witt is a poet, family history writer, active birder and photographer. Peter retired in 2015 from a 43-year university teaching and research career. He lives with his wife in Texas.

Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash

The Breakfast Whisperer

1 September 2024 /

Nonfiction by Ellen Notbohm

Even eight-year-olds dressed up for airplane trips in the 1960s. Hence my flying from Oregon to Chicago in a bright white pique dress with a black-and-white checked collar, hem and sash. From my aisle seat at the back of the plane, I could see my parents and little brother several rows ahead. I didn’t mind sitting alone. I felt worldly. The stewardess brought breakfast: eggs over easy, toast triangles soaked in margarine, a tiny cup of canned fruit cocktail. My mother fervently despised margarine and canned fruit cocktail, so I felt even more worldly gobbling them, quite literally, behind her back. The greasy damp bread and slimy grapes sliding down my throat would never have been a first choice for breakfast, but opportunities for small acts of defiance rarely came my way. That made them delicious.

However, the egg was going to be trickier. Hard-boiled or scrambled eggs, those were acceptable ways to eat a yolk, but this one ran all over the plate like yellow blood from a paper cut. Revolted, I tried to cut around it delicately, in order to pop small bites of the whites into my mouth. Even on an airplane, it felt like it would be rude to reject the meal, even if politely. No thanks. I’m not hungry.

Then, calamity. A dot of egg yolk, blinding as the sun, landed in a splotch on my white collar, spreading through the mesh fabric like an inkblot.

I must have gasped in horror, because the man seated next to me glanced over. As I scraped at the stain with my napkin, he said gently, “That will only make it worse.”

Indeed, little balls and shreds of napkin stuck to the stain, unchanged for my efforts. When my tears welled, the man spoke again. “It’s just a small stain. I’m sure it will come out. That’s such a pretty dress. It doesn’t ruin it at all.”

“My mother will be angry,” I told the nice man, which wasn’t true. My mother never angered over small mishaps. I was angry with myself, dribbling food like a two-year-old. I added, “We’re going to see my grandparents,” doubting whether he could possibly understand how rare and important this was.

“I’m sure they’ll be so happy to see you that they won’t even notice a tiny spot on your dress.”

I finally looked up at this nice man, who had magically said exactly the right thing, wiping away my despair, if not the stain. Sandy-colored brows topped his light blue eyes, and he wore a black uniform with brass buttons and white braid trim. He said he was Captain Smith, and that he had a daughter about my age.

“She calls me Cap’n Crunch,” he told me, making me giggle in spite of myself. “But we still won’t buy the cereal.” He smiled as if he knew I would understand, and I nodded, no, my mom wouldn’t buy it either. She bought things like Kix and Cornflakes and Puffed Rice and all of sudden I was telling him why I thought Puffed Rice was ridiculous. You have to be really careful pouring the milk on or it will overflow. If it doesn’t overflow, the puffed rice just sits there on the milk, bobbing like balloons in a bathtub, until they take on enough milk to sink and turn to disgusting mush. Captain Smith laughed and said I’d described Puffed Rice perfectly, yes, it was like eating Styrofoam, and thank you, because now he would remember me and never eat it again.

At O’Hare, I introduced Captain Smith to my parents. He told them what a charming daughter they had, and wished them a pleasant time in Chicago.

Hurtling down the expressway in our rental car, my mother remarked, neither kindly or unkindly, that Captain Smith wasn’t a real captain, not in the U.S. military, and not an airline pilot. He was a captain in the Salvation Army.

The bell-ringers with the coin buckets at Christmastime? How did she know this? Something about that immaculate uniform? Then I wondered what I was supposed to do with this information. I said nothing because it made no difference to me. Captain Smith was a kind man who knew just what I needed to hear at the moment I most needed it. He was indeed my salvation. Real enough for me.

Ellen Notbohm’s internationally renowned work has touched millions in more than twenty-five languages. She is author of the award-winning novel The River by Starlight, the nonfiction classic Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew, and numerous short fiction and nonfiction pieces appearing in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies.

pile of books
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Hiding Behind a Book

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Jennifer Campbell

These days, you will be the odd one,
everyone else’s focus flickering
to the flow of a billion pixels,
attention ebbing and flowing,
the vastness of that ocean
knocking them off their feet
while your face is a changing map
of parchment, a 90-degree bend
where your nose should be,
eyebrow birds arched above the action,
and should one of them wonder
what lies behind an abstract painting,
Achilles’ empty gold helmet,
or a stark black tree,
it will be impossible to say,
your concentration popped
into the present yet needing time
to pry the words on the page
from the countless incantations
they stir in each reader,
none of which stop you
from knowing where your body is
in this glowing moment
and what they are missing.

Jennifer Campbell is a writing professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. Her most recent book, What Came First (Dancing Girl Press, 2021), contains reconstituted fairytale poems. Jennifer’s work has recently appeared in Slipstream, The Healing Muse, ArLiJo, and American Journal of Nursing.

pink carnation flower head in a swimming pool
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Marilyn Monroe’s Lipstick

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Julie Evan Smith

She was good to me
Applying me with just the right amount of pressure
Never smearing me on in haste.
And when I disappeared in the act of kissing
It was always a sad farewell
As I liked the feel of her lips moving when she shaped words
And spoke in her soft voice.

Revlon retired my name after her death.
I am the last one of my kind
Collected after her passing
Along with receipts and gum wrappers
Furs and gowns and gloves
A frenzy of acquisition
By people greedy for the smallest part of her.

Author’s Note: According to www.juliensauctions.com, an item up for auction was one of Marilyn Monroe’s tubes of used Revlon lipstick in “Bachelor’s Carnation” dated 1947 and described as “a virtual time capsule of one of the star’s nights out on the town.”

Julie Evan Smith‘s work has been published online at On The Run Fiction and StreetLit. In addition to flash fiction and poetry she has performed personal essays at storytelling shows in Los Angeles and New York. She loves reading history, wearing boots, and eating candy corn.

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