Arvilla Fee teaches English Composition for Clark State College and is the poetry editor for the San Antonio Review. She has published poetry, photography, and short stories in numerous presses, and her poetry book, The Human Side, is available on Amazon. For Arvilla, writing produces the greatest joy when it connects us to each other.
Time Out
I remove myself
from shoulders and elbows
jostling for position,
the stiff staccato beat
of a million harried feet.
I trade traffic lights
for skies pinpricked with stars,
high-rises for pines,
the smell of exhaust and sweat
for the dewy dampness of soil.
I curl cat-like on my blanket,
content to spoon the moon,
and fall asleep to the serenade
of crickets on the bluff.
Oh, Child of Mine
It was the doctor
who cut the cord,
your life blood,
your life bond to me.
It was she
who laid you
on my belly,
just above the womb
that once tucked you away
from the world.
But it was you
who cut the cord,
eighteen short years later,
cut the life blood,
cut the life bond to me.
It was you,
the untethered you,
who floated far beyond
the reach
of my now empty hands.
The Breath
of memories
fog my mind;
I can’t see through the pane.
I can’t see through the pain.
But I trace my fingers
in the condensation
and make a lopsided heart,
a heart that once held
the whole of you,
unbroken by tragedy,
that split second in time
that divided then and now
and left me unprepared
to navigate a world
never quite warm enough.
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