Crowds swarm among blossoming cherry trees. Taking pictures, trampling fallen flowers—ignoring the aspiring poet who composes beneath their branches.
Hopeful koi surface,
mistaking floating petals
for drowned dragonflies.
Winds strip every tree overnight, faded blooms smothering the lake. He drifts with them, dreams and poems erased by uncaring water.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
He steals another sly glance at the hitchhiker, muffled in fleeces and darkness. “Moose aren’t the only things on these roads.” He’s half-joking, savouring and delaying, knife a promise in his pocket. “Sometimes there’re monsters, too…”
He thinks she smiles.
They’ll blame bears or wolves.
Bury him quickly, without questions.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
The tower clock counts sonorous hours while I sit on this gravestone, watching the moon wane and recollecting past misdeeds. Tonight’s certainly colder, a bone-pincher spiked with frost. Stars glitter overhead: crueller than any diamonds, but infinitely easier to ignore.
I thought death guaranteed eternal rest.
Seems I was wrong.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Summer lingers on,
in butterflies’ bright wingbeats
and bee-bowed flowers.
Succulent berries
ripen in golden hedgerows,
cobwebbed with dawn mist.
Birds seek southern sun,
while industrious squirrels
cache abundant hoards.
Brisker winds rattle
apples down: speckled, blemished,
but lusciously sweet.
Children kick through leaves,
giggling, hurling handfuls—
pretending they’re snow.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Red rain’s fallen countless times, macabre downpours ensanguined by desert dust or tiny algae, swept into the clouds and tumbling back to earth. Mere quirks of nature and climate rather than doom-laden portents, providing novelty filler for condescending newspapers and social media.
Until today, when the skies weep real blood.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
She picks up the pieces as usual. Wraps and mails the packages, amazed there’re so many names on his list. Readies the house for its new owners, catches the plane—and she can finally relax, imagining surprised faces when they open their gifts.
The girlfriend who gets his head screams.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
She brings that potent moonshine she always bragged could raise the dead and we drink together, recalling our most audacious heists. She’s endlessly fishing, but I’m evasive; once she knows where the money’s hidden she won’t return, whatever she says.
She leaves dissatisfied. And I crawl back into my grave.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Winter clings tighter,
haloing the starlit moon
with glittering frost.
Trees become brushstrokes
sketched against uncertain skies,
their leaves departed.
Grey heron hunching
statue-like beside the ice
remembers swift fish.
Mist veils bare hedgerows,
spinning tangled stems into
lacy silhouettes.
One early snowdrop
braves this unrelenting chill,
promising the spring.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
She knots the pretty scarf around a branch already rippling with countless strips of fabric. The oldest are only rags now, ghosts of forgotten hopes and desires. She whispers her wish against the gnarled trunk before driving away, leaving the murder weapon to flutter and fade like every other dream.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
We counted bullets and money. Drank warm beer that fizzed sour across our tongues. Lay under wide skies and watched stars fall. You said they were bad souls burning, that I could wish on them.
I wish on one now, my cheek pressed against the bars.
Wonder if it’s yours.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.