At Odd Times, I Trip

I.
Last night, I found you
again, your lost red slipper peaking beneath
the locked door. I thought
I almost heard it scratch at the wood,
the way rays stab open eyes at noon.
The sound hung like the sun,
daunting, blinding, ever-present,
warm. I kicked it back, stubbed
my little right toe, so
i sat frozen, only for a second,
to let the pain pass, the way
funeral cars travel,
slowly, heavily, like lungs taking
a breath too deep - pinky pain
seeping to an innocent toe, my feet
seeking together solace in stubbed misery.

II.
The presence of you trips at odd times.
The prescents of you trip at odd times.

III.
In my refusal to acknowledge you, floating
in the air as heavy mists do, i succumb,
and the memory of you condensates on
my face, legs, lips like dew on leaf. With
the back of my hand, I wipe off moisture.

IV.
There are days when the air is dry, when
I can taste stale dirt under my tongue - air
gritty, brown as cracked earth, dried blood.
Too difficult to swallow, so I choke.

V.
I keep that door locked, locking
in your scent, a red
sunset frozen in the retina
of my eye. When your presence trips,
I only give a blink, catch a swift whiff,
afraid the ghost of you will enter my lungs,
reach each cavity, and the ends and edges
will snap and fall, as red berries drop
from branches, onto asphalt,
painting the soles of stomping shoes,
leaving the tree dry.

__

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt was to explore the idea of synaesthesia as a poet, to allow our senses to merge and mingle with one another for a heightened experience of the physical and emotional world. I must admit that I found the task to be quite challenging, unable to successfully capture color as a sound, emotion, touch. I think I made the task even more complicated when I decided to include the idea of memory, of presence, and of loss and grieving into this poem. After I started writing, I realized that I was making the natural difficult. As poets, we do practice synaesthesia. We may not be grapheme --> color synaesthetes or music --> color synaesthetes, but we certainly and truly are life --> language synaesthetes, able to evoke the memory, emotion, and experience of our being through words. We see life in verbs and nouns, commas, line breaks, modifiers, beats, meter, rhyme. While most synaesthetes are solitary in their perception of the world, unable to transfer the experience to another unless that person is a synaesthete him/herself - we, as poets, are able to transfer our experiences, share it with others through language.

Labels: Poetry, Writing Prompts