After the parade,
The astronaut let her hair grow long
And sometimes wore sunglasses
While picking up rotisserie chicken for dinner.
She answered the phone less and less
But watched the waves lap
At all hours.
A black cormorant’s perigee
And plunge. A puffer fish
Surfacing under stars.
Dolphins
Like kindergartners
In a game of shadow tag.
A neighbor said that her eyes
Had become telescopes,
Bending an ancient, violet light.
One lover, leaving, said her lips
Tasted of paradox.
The astronaut knew
Her place in the world
No longer was.
She’d glimpsed herself
Transfigured in a parhelion,
Her body impossible
As a Klein bottle,
Both containing herself
And everything that she wasn’t.
She saw that dawn
Is both an entry and
An exodus.
But even then,
It came to her:
The realization that
Long after her rapture,
She’d still have to shop at Target.
About the Creator
P. D. Murray
Murray is an accomplished painter and writer.
Through 2010, he was shown exclusively by Treehouse Studio Galleries. His work hangs in private collections around the world. He's also published 5 books. You can see more at www.pdmurray.art
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More stories from P. D. Murray and writers in Poets and other communities.
Praying on the weak
The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. It showed my lonely chambers, in the back of a cold church. It showed Alby Duncan and his daughter, Lucy, standing behind me. Alby had been a member of my flock so long that I remember Lucy being born. 19 years ago that was. It was always a delight to see them. Lucy smiled at me in the mirror. “Hello, Father Morris,” she says.
By Shane Dobbie3 days ago in Fiction
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