Mental Health
“The Light‑Weight Coffee Ballad”
This is a light weight video from Sweetie Bird. She had Mom, Vicki, me, turn off the news to have fun today. Taking a break. No Folgers for me, just light weight humor, and light weight coffee with no acid to burn through the atmosphere,
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 4 months ago in Poets
When the room breathes
The hallway clock had swallowed its own tongue and still she waited beneath it, hands folded like funeral gloves, watching the wallpaper breathe. There was a woman in the third room upstairs who embroidered names into handkerchiefs for children who had not yet died. Every stitch a prophecy. Every thread pulled tight enough to sing. At dusk, the doctor came carrying violets dark as bruises beneath the frost. He spoke softly to the floorboards as if the house itself were feverish. As if grief could catch. The mother in the kitchen boiled peaches to ruin. Sugar burned black at the bottom of the pot. No one mentioned the smell. No one mentioned the small pair of shoes still drying beside the stove since April. Outside, the crows dragged evening across the fields in long ribbons of ink. A horse stood unmoving near the fence line, its ribs opening and closing like the bellows of an organ. And somewhere upstairs a child laughed. Not loudly. Not alive either. The sound traveled through the wallpaper first, then through the teeth of the women listening below. One crossed herself. One dropped her spoon into the sink and watched it disappear beneath dishwater as though the house were swallowing silver now. The doctor climbed the stairs without a lamp. Step. Step. Step. The boards answered him by name. In the room at the end of the corridor the curtains swelled inward though the windows had long been nailed shut. Moonlight rested on the bed like water over a drowned thing. There sat the child. Small hands folded neatly. Sunday collar buttoned to the throat. Eyes carrying the color of storm clouds before they split open over wheat. “You took too long,” the child said. The doctor removed his hat. Downstairs, the peaches continued burning. The smell filled every room. Sweetness and rot together. The sort of scent that clings to mourning clothes for years after the funeral. The mother finally climbed the stairs then, slowly, as though each step demanded a confession. When she reached the doorway she did not scream. That is what made the house unbearable. Not terror. Recognition. She crossed the room and touched the child’s cheek. Cold as porcelain left in winter rain. The child leaned into her palm with the hunger of something buried too young. Outside, the crows fell silent. Inside, the wallpaper continued breathing. And by morning the house had forgotten every name inside it except hers.
By Taylor Ward4 months ago in Poets
Survival mode
There are Hours which do not ring upon the Clock Yet the Body knows them A peculiar tightening of the Orchard Air before Storms elect their Violence The Blood becomes attentive then Like Horses hearing distant Iron upon a road no Eye has witnessed One waits though for what the Mind refuses proper Language The Walls draw nearer by Imperceptible Inches The Curtains breathe The Floor acquires the motion of a Ship unmoored from God And beneath the Sternum something scratches Not Beast Not Bird Some pale inhabitant with patient Nails turning circles inside the Cagework One smiles still One pours the Tea correctly One discusses Weather and Wheat and Scripture while inwardly the Match is held too near the Wick It is a strange Affliction to burn and exhibit no Flame The Nerves become Telegraph Wires receiving Messages from absent Countries all translated poorly A Door inside the Skull opens and opens though no Man enters Even the Silence acquires Teeth At Night the Sheets grow ceremonial cold as river stones laid upon the Dead and the Heart performs its nervous Ministry with the devotion of an overworked Bell There are Sensations for which Heaven made no Vocabulary The feeling of falling while seated perfectly still The certainty that something dreadful has paused outside the Window only to admire its Reflection Morning arrives indecently bright The World carries on its small employments Birdsong Bootheels Milk steaming upon the Stove And one rises buttoning the Wilderness beneath the ribs as though it were merely another Garment fit for polite Society
By Taylor Ward4 months ago in Poets
