Monday, September 2, 2019

Flying Without Wings



Familiar hands press into my shoulders.
So many memories pulse through palms
warming my skin negating distance
with their intimacy…the calm before terror.

There’s euphoria in the free fall, the weightless
sense of air and sky mixing with adrenaline.
It’s where I’ll land that pulls screams from my throat.

Judgement, the patient bitch, steals the last rose
from my cheeks and pushes its thorns into my bones.
How many pieces of my shell can be glued into resurrection?

“Officer, I told him he shouldn’t sit on the ledge,
but he insisted. He wanted to recreate the photo
I took of him on our first date.”

©Susie Clevenger 2019



7 comments:

  1. My goodness this is incredibly rich in imagery and emotion, Susie! I especially like; "How many pieces of my shell can be glued into resurrection?" Very powerful writing!❤️

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aussie American ThoughtsSeptember 2, 2019 at 9:31 AM

    Well done, Susie. The reveal at the end caught me by surprise.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the focus on the hands... comforting care to terror. Poor guy, like humpty dumpty, never to be put back together again. With the title I also had a sense of the fallen angel. he has been judged unworthy. What a terrible "accident" to have occurred. *winks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Suspenseful, intense writing! Great use of imagery to give that untethered vibe.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh.. that closing part which pulled me back into what was really happening here...

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm smiling, Susie. Here is hoping there is not much trouble from Humpty breaking. Depends on how the officer tickets or not. My favorite is the whole third verse It drips of lament.
    I wrote a poem about Humpty this July for Izzie. It was fun but mine doesn't compare to yours.
    https://jimmiehov6.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-p0em-writing-out-of-standard.html?m=1
    ..

    ReplyDelete