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Lost Things Wait for You to Find Them but Sometimes They Don't

Inverse Poetry

By Teresa RentonPublished 3 years ago • Updated 2 years ago • 1 min read
First Place in Inverse Challenge
Photo by author

You’ll find what you have lost

think of when you held it last

my inner sage counsels

retrace your steps

your misplaced charm will dangle

dizzying

in an angle of side-seeping light

with blinding iridescence

like misplaced keys

pimpernels in mischief mode

pinned to the place you left them

like the promises we planted

You can’t remember?

in biodegradable pots

white alliums for our wedding

Lost things

flung from prams by toddlers

like rainbow jellycats

to find lost things

retrace your steps

don’t lose parts of yourself

on the way

to where you need to go

Anchor a thread from now

unravel with intention

I'll follow the advice

I’ll collect heartbeats

in the missing rungs

of the ladder back to you

I’m at the bottom

germinating once again

reaching for an ambivalent sun

Is climbing the answer?

Does hickory crumble under pressure?

the creak of splintered rungs

step after step

could send me tumbling over

rejection’s hollow presence

Your soap lies cracking,

deliquescence lost

from the absence of your skin

I am a misplaced diary

Pages and pages of lost things

fireflies for a hungry dark

where night has lost its stars

Electricity sparks my cheek

flickers in a passing breeze

Your scent flirts with me

in unceasing symbiosis

Did we just share oxygen?

Are you near?

Did you dissolve with the sunlight?

if I retrace my clumsy steps

clinging to Hermes' arm

I know you won't be there

you left with traces of my touch

clinging to your skin

without me.

* * * * *

Now read it from bottom to top. Thank you ☺️

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About the Creator

Teresa Renton

Inhaling life, exhaling stories, poetry, prose, flash or fusions. An imperfect perfectionist who writes and recycles words. I write because I love how it feels to make ink patterns & form words, like pictures, on a page.

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    Written by Teresa Renton