May 21.23: Thursday Doors Writing Challenge #3

It was a lovely August day, and the house was open. Through the kitchen window, I could hear the voices outside where Dad was talking to a neighbor. Dad was 83, but he sounded 20, self-assured and energetic in his conversation. No fumbling for words or any other signs that he was making it up as he went along.

Then he came in and asked me where the bathroom was. He’d lived in that house for over 50 years.

The Black Thing filled the doorway on his way to the bathroom; Dad walked through it. It was always in a doorway, a wanton living sentient void, to remind me there was no way out.  There was no food that didn’t taste like the blackness, no sunshine that wasn’t tainted by it, no voice that wasn’t hollowed by it. Its very silence was discordant.

I made dinner earlier to get food in dad before the Black Thing took him. It curled Dad over his dinner plate, forced him to strip his bed and stuff the pillows in his desk, forced him to dig tablecloths out of the old buffet and arrange them, bedlike, on the dining room floor, forced him to walk and walk and walk and walk. Night after night after night.

It covered Dad’s eyes with nightmares so Dad wouldn’t know where he was, wouldn’t know me, wouldn’t know himself. Walking, walking, driven by the Black Thing. Dad’s face wore the dying. Walking, walking, frail, frightened, angry.

When the anguished nights gave way to exhausted day, the Black Thing resumed its vigil in doorways. Like a bat to a cave. Goading me. Dad knew nothing of the nights, of the faceless thing that made even the humanity of tears impossible.

 

Submitted to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge

with thanks to him for hosting,

and with thanks to Teagan R. Geneviene for the photo.

May 2.23: Coping, but barely

“At the end of the day”

you hear people say;

it’s kind of a trend

to invoke the day’s end.

Clichés are so born,

and now I am torn:

how else can I write

of incoming night?

The end of the day

is about shadow play,

puffs pink and white

in slanted late light,

their tippy-toe stretch

to yawn and to catch

that pearly soft ray

at the end of the day.

March 22.22: Coping, but barely

Twilight curtains parted

and in grand purple theater

arose a ponderous butterscotch moon.

“Catch me if you can!”

it stage-whispered to my camera,

which sighed in my hands,

and tried, oh, so many times,

noble machine,

but in the end could only stand with me,

groundlings both,

in awed suspension of disbelief.

You may ask, dear reader, if there is anything

that doesn’t remind me of dessert.

I’ve asked that too.

December 29.21: Coping

Last night I flipped the light switch in an upstairs bedroom and the whole house went dark. I asked every homeowner’s favorite question: now what? Then lights back on. Then off. On. Off. Off…off…

I found myself in a world of India ink. Not a glimmer, not the tiniest shard of light. Groping is a graceless ballet, but just so did I find the stairs, the banister, and warily make my way down. Why, you may ask, did I not think to grab the flashlight that’s upstairs? Because it’s me.

Bumping along, I looked out the front windows. A world without light. Disorienting, unsettling. As I inched through the house, a timid glow startled me. My battery candles! Beacons! My feet steadied immediately, and I made it to the back door, next to my shadowy Christmas tree. The houses across the pond were black. Not a light anywhere. It was as though every person in the world was gone but me.

A lightless world is an empty world.

The power company did me the courtesy of calling to tell me there was a power outage. Really?

Why are the robots never programmed to tell the customer what happened? So far as I could tell, I flipped the switch in an upstairs bedroom and shut down a small city.

How oppressive that solid, unforgiving darkness. What a slamming shut of life. Our fears are never far from us, are they?

 

 

December 7.21: Coping

Who said the moon is cheese?

Why, anyone can see

the moon is made of paper,

thick and cottony.

Someone tore it gently

in swooping deckled arc,

sculpting it to give me

a wink against the dark.

 

Dear reader,

This is not the perfect photo

about which I can boast;

the window I took aim through

added flourish of moon ghost.

But nighttime in the winter

I prefer being warm to bold;

it isn’t only dark out there,

it’s finger-nipping cold!

 

This is another one that, despite its length, makes me want to append “Burma-Shave!”

 

 

November 21.21: Coping

When winter moon laughs,

the sky shimmers

like sequined cloth,

and the trees reach

their paper leaves

to touch the spangles,

and the laughter bubbles

downward

to distant lacy roots.

And then one day

the tree,

filled with moon fizz,

explodes in green.

 

 

August 22.21: Coping

In the time of two breaths

there’s the twilight sweet spot

when everything hovers

between color and not.

White becomes silver

as shadows unfurl,

or maybe it’s pewter

or mother-of-pearl;

reds turn to velvet

with lavender nap,

blues, cupric sulfate,

with diamond wrap.

Yellows to brass

with gold overlays,

burnished in hot coal,

smoldering blaze.

And a palette is born

each day at its end

that no words can capture

but only pretend.

 

 

June 25.21: Coping

Every day

the sun gets old,

enfeebled, dwindling,

softens hold

and quits the world

with liquid light,

deferring to silver

suns of night.

 

 

April 25.21: Coping

One

pierces the twilight

with incorrigible song

defiant

in the face of night.

A ponderous tired sun

pauses

in stately descent

to anoint the singer

with gold.

 

March 29.21: Coping

How like Venus,

with wisp of night cloud,

twiggy veil,

rising, unbowed,

daring the eye to see,

the word to say

what some Olympus

has made of clay.

 

Did you see it, dear reader?

What a wonder!