An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: loss

Impossible Love

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.

Churning

Poetry by Robbie Hess

The sun will rise again tomorrow,
but I’m thinking of my dad tonight
churning the butter of my sorrow.

He beamed a peppery amber glow,
and knew words that made broken hearts all right:
The sun will rise again tomorrow.

He taught me about the bayou willow,
and that gravy rests on the onion’s might,
churning the butter of my sorrow.

Now he is gone, and I am hollow
as an egg without a yolk or white.
The sun will rise again tomorrow.

I sprinkle his ashes in shallow
swamp water and begin to write,
churning the butter of my sorrow.

I wish we’d had more time to borrow.
My heart weeps over this forlorn fight.
The sun will rise again tomorrow,
churning the butter of my sorrow.


Robbie Hess is a Southern poet, and a recent graduate of The University of Alabama.

Stage IV

Poetry by Susan Miller

She graced many stages
in her 29-year-old life.
Clumsy, giggly ones
with slick patent leather,
pigtails, snug pink tights.
Sweaty, clingy ones
bent and twisted
under cruel disco lights.
Floating, chiffon ones
with crimson-lined lips,
pointed toes, height.
But in that icy, antiseptic
room with its swabs,
ceiling stickers, scopes
and gauze-filled jars,
the man with joyless eyes
rolled over in his squeaky
chair. And the words sliced
into the air like a scalpel,
shredding her satin heart.


Susan Miller is an editor/reporter for USA TODAY who enjoys writing poetry as a hobby.

The Lost One

Poetry by Lisa Spencer Trecost

I look at the sky and see a cloud
So I talk to you but not out loud

You left me here on the ground
A place at times I cannot stand

I hear the noise as people speak
But for the one I listen I cannot see

I feel you in the vast blue sky
I feel you in the tears I cry

I taste salt air and remember when…
So I reach for you but touch only wind

You’re near but far, a heart without beat
While mine still races as I desperately seek
The one who is missing
Me.


Lisa Spencer Trecost is a heart-centered writer who loves to travel with her husband and dogs.

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