By Caroline Reddy
PROMPT—No one noticed ...
Your ashes drift
as I grip unopened letters
to my chest—
—you wrap
your last breath
around a shroud—
I hold my tongue.
Yours decomposes.
My core remains
as I liberate the infestation:
of thoughts—
I looked like a boy.
I was thirteen years old
when father’s words—
suffocated my embryo.
In your absence
the summer chills
kept me company.
I felt the shivers
in my throat—
so I left the symphony
and dreamt—
—of a tiny concertina,
to catch some loyalty.
I squeezed my graces
and invoked the opaque lamp
from an antique store
and
in the dim light
I soothed
my misfit tears.
Caroline Reddy's work has been accepted or published in Active Muse, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Braided Way, Calliope, Clinch, Grey Sparrow, Deep Overstock, Fresh Wods Magazine, Indefinite Space, International Human Rights Arts Festival, Literary Heist, The Opiate, Quail Bell and Star*line, Journal of Expressive Writing, among others. In the Fall of 2021, her poem “A Sacred Dance” was nominated for the Best of The Net prize by Active Muse. Caroline was born in Shiraz, Iran and is currently working on a collection of poems titled, "Shake the Atmosphere to Reclaim an Empty Moment-a Collection of Healing & Transformation." She writes from New Rochelle, NY.