.
.

Everything will be normal again
and I’ll lean on my horn
at the injustice of double
parkers on single-lane streets.

I’ll roll my eyes at the throngs
of tourists blocking
my way on cobblestone paths.

I’ll scream inwardly,
impatient with slow-moving
lines ahead of me
as I make my way
to my theater seat.

I’ll silently count to five to avoid rudely pushing through throngs of out-of-towners gawking at things for sale at this week’s street festival — all those couples and groups so oblivious of others, taking too many selfies, talking too loud all of us packed…

.
.

You want to take everything
and make it new
in your garage
repair shop.

I see myself spread out
on your work
bench —

my broken wings,
give them back
to me. They are
more aerodynamic
that way
than you think.

My heart,
these pieces
don’t need to be
soldered back together.

The glue and tape
are yellow, but I am
perfectly content
to keep the fallen off
pieces in an old
candy dish
on my nightstand.

I see you’ve made
a mess trying to smooth
over the rough edges
of my soul.

Give it back. I want…

.

I burned a million
candles for a love
that never came.

I placed them
in the window,
on the altar
of my dreams,
all along the path
to my bed,
that I decorate with shiny
pieces of my heart
that glittered
in the candlelight
and danced
beneath the moon.

I waited.

I looked for signs,
I looked and hoped

I never stopped

believing in the promise
of fairy tales
and poetry.
I longed
for a miracle,
for the miracle
that is true love.

I burned candles for a love that never came all that light left me was waxy…

.
.

Alone in the dark with a mind
is a dangerous place to be.

I am full of thoughts turned inward,
in the softness of my bed.

Every vexation rises to the surface —
self-recriminations, doubts, worries.

Alone in the dark with memories I wish
were better, but too often I sold myself out
because it was easier.

Now I am full of frustrated
longing. I sleep alone with a mind-enemy
ready to do battle
with any semblance of peace.

Nightmares overtake me,
I awake unsettled.

My heartbeat pounds upside down
and my mind is on the downside
of half-awake.

Alone in the dark, I wish to be
without this mind for a few hours
and slip into the darkest reaches
of the deep sleep
I knew as a child.

~

© 2020, A. Breslin. All Rights Reserved

.
.

I am scattered
pieces of Europe;
a quilt of the scrap remains
of dozens of immigrants.

I am from nowhere
else, but I’m white,
so people ask
about the ancestors
I never knew.

I oblige and rattle
off my list of countries,
and they list theirs too.

Maybe we find
a few places where we have
never lived in common.

We wear our ancestors’
flags like our identity,
because apparently,
no one is just American,
not after one generation
or eight.

They boarded ships
more or less
of their own free will;
they wanted to live.

They came…

.
.

I can taste the dark.

It’s gritty and crackles
in my mouth.
I chew it over
and watch the clock.

I have been watching it
all my life.

I always believed
in progress,
but time goes
round and round,
usually.

Time is linear
round my eyes
and mouth,
circular in the four
chambers of my heart.

It ticks decades
before I know it,
tolls love,
counts hours
of absence,
and years of too long.

It knows when all
my tocks will stop,
but never tells.

It ticks, ticks, ticks
ready to burst,
ready to explode
a black hole.

…