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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover Girl of the Flowers
by Lauri Burke
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waiting for your daughter's text
an hour after it was promised
the dots beat
one two three one two three
as the heart speeds,
everything distilled down
to this infinity of a moment,
threatening a darkness so complete
it takes all breath away
and then,
four letters that make one word
pop like a balloon,
harmless and beautiful
home
and the world is sunshine again
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as I sit down to write,
my desk calendar tells me
never to do anything
I would be afraid to do
if it were the last hour of my life
and it's a little early for stuff like that,
calendar, or is it too late?
or maybe the last hour of your life
is exactly the time
to do things you're afraid of
like tell people you love them
when you're not certain of the response
or forgive people
when you don't think they deserve it
or decide not to worry so much
your heart's gonna stop
because it was made that way
a little bomb the size of a fist
denting your ribs with each tick
a sound you never hear
unless you're listening for it
I text a wellness check
to everyone that matters
pulse settling as the answers chime
then angle the calendar away from me,
hide the clock on my phone,
draw the blackout curtains in my room
and open a blank page document
on the computer screen
filling it with anything in my life
I've made a stab at understanding
fingers typing without meter or rhythm,
no way to deduce a beginning or an ending
because an hour is a long time
when you're waiting
and nothing at all when you're not
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I wake up covered over entirely by sunlight
soldier crawling to the window
I draw the drapes around my head like a
kerchief
watching the outside and all its living,
awestruck, as if it might not have happened
as if today were a chance, fifty-fifty at best,
but somehow, even after the flipped quarter missed my hand,
hit the counter, the chair, the floor, and
twirled on its edge,
still, after a moment,
dropped like a promise washington side up
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I have a cat
who will not let me touch her
until she decides I may
and even then it must be correctly,
only on the top of the head
and only after she has surveyed the area
and any dangers lurking there,
including me,
and laid down on her side,
and surveyed the space over her
and decided that, too, is safe
and then, looking at me,
I hold out my hand
and she waits and I pet the top of her head.
this used to happen maybe twice a day
and now that I'm home and quarantined,
more often, though the ritual has not changed,
the order remains the same
and I follow it exactly
because she is a very little cat
and skittish and sweet
and it has taken time for her to trust me,
to allow me to be kind to her, when,
I must assume by her strict guidelines,
others in her past have not been
and I do not want to let her down
because it is a very brave thing to trust
like holding a hand
guiding you through a darkened room
and, after coming to what seems like a precipice,
feeling it squeeze and pull you forward
and you follow and the drop never comes
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Kate LaDew © 2020
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover collage by JanK
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Every microchap
may be downloaded
for free
from this website.
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one day you say,
so many things
to me all at once,
that,
in a pause
I take for my turn,
answer yes
and the light
that swells up inside your eyes
and comes bursting
into every corner of the room,
tells me I am right
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one day a man rode a bicycle,
from Sweden to Mount Everest,
scaled it alone, sans oxygen, and rode home.
one day you held my hand,
traced the heart line, and said this is me.
neither of us breathed until our palms
met in the descent
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Kate LaDew © 2018
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one day when I was a little girl,
I learned a beech tree doesn’t conduct lightning,
how I found this out, who told me,
where the information was stored (before my own head)
I have no idea
but in a storm, I knew the safest place to be was under a beech tree
others might shiver into splinters but a beech tree never could,
holding on to its wood and standing, if bowed,
as thunder and rain beat down.
I’ve never seen a beech tree, never felt its limbs over me,
never looked up, sure of my own safety,
but I’m still looking, even when the sky is blue,
because somehow it must be true,
somehow all the little things a little girl believes must come true
when you need them to
and I believe in beech trees, standing up to lightning,
if nothing else, I can tell my younger self, in all this frightening world,
something’s there for you, one thing, one little thing,
one little thing you always knew, is true
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one day I find a bottle of extra virgin olive oil in the cabinet above the oven
from my healthy living period
a clove of garlic a day
half a cup of lentils
handful of blueberries
one block of dark chocolate
two ounces of fish
there are only 3 tablespoons gone and
you're pouring it in the skillet,
making our breakfast for dinner
fried eggs and bacon and cheese toast
and I know after you scrape it onto our plates
you'll run the iron under the tap
to see the smoke and hear the hiss
feeling like a viking or some blacksmith from long gone days.
when I wake up in the morning there's a layer of grease
on the cookie sheet I scrape into a plastic grocery bag
and when the next tenants move into my apartment
the smell of bacon trapped in the floorboards
will either comfort or sicken and I think about synchronicity
and how rash decisions left on high shelves sometimes make the best nights
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Kate LaDew © 2018
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Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art.