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She rolled the wooden cane
towards the open doorway,
down a narrow hall.
She squeezed her
bunioned toes
into her new orthopedic shoes,
still a bit too tight.
Bertie leaned down.
She could not pull the sock
with her swollen fingers.

Last night’s Shabbos chicken soup
had no backbone or taste.
Too much salt. Tears of fear.
Rotating circles of oil whirling
between dill and parsley tails,
shifting days and seasons into
80 years and one week.
Time has moved on.
Mama’s chicken soups
lingered on her tongue.
Memory.
That is all she has left.

Shuffling behind her walker,
Bertie shifted her weight,
and moved back and forth.
Bent over like the Joker yet
standing still.

How much has been forgotten?
Too much has been lost.
A wooden cane was hidden
under the living room, one deck
of playing cards, joker bent in two.
Bertie did not understand.
Facts And fiction interfaced in storytelling.
All that is left is memory.

Imposing passersby,
already forgotten,
remembered all too well.
That girl with the red woolen coat,
almost a century now.
Inhale
exhale
one day
one hour
one minute
one hushed
breath
at a time.
Tick tock tick tock tick.
The taxi toots its horn.
The time had come.

Bertie stared out over the crowd.
Scrutinizing her surroundings with
the raven’s glare.
The memorial flag,
flew half-mast while hundreds
marched in solitude,
memory between each shadow.
Mumbled numbers, names forgotten.
Ticktock ticktock ticktock.

Rivka and Ruben emerged,
the welcomed mirage.
Fragile blue-veined fingers
waved hesitantly in the wind, relaying
shouts of joy from above
the amassing crowds.
The flag was raised.
No one was lost. Everyone knew:
We are here.

Bertie and Rivka clasp hands,
forgetting the decades that have passed.
They are no
longer youngsters.
It is over.
Tick tock tick tock. The flag,
the numbers not
forgotten.

There was a time
when the chicken soup
was not too salty
and when names were barely
remembered or spoken out loud.
A time of the other.
A time when time stood still.
The time when counting minutes
tick tock
and watching the movements
of one another
saved lives if only for
one more tick.

This time Bertie and Rivka
stood at attention, fearless.
They have survived.
Memories of last night’s
chicken soup, somewhat salty
tasted delicious while tears of laughter
jiggled their new false teeth.
Bertie swallowed her pride
and Rivka savored it all.

They are together now.
This is what truly matters,
more than anything.
They embrace each other and softly
whisper their names.

Arms enfold,
legs entangle

Battering memories
change to sighs,

in my mind’s room
of reliving

Remember meeting
in

light?
honeyed

Remember lying
in

entwined
bedsheets?

A bottle of lip balm
A letter, never opened

A copy of Bowie’s pop

These are all objects
that linger in the memory

These are keepsakes
of a love that forever thunders

in the caverns of the mind,
and always resounds

Remember the myriad caresses
that wrought us both?

Remember, yes, remember,
we can only, now, remember

Cherish these ruminations,
never let them ebb

Because they honour a bond
that teemed more than any,

that out-twinkled every star,
and that must always be revered.

Seemed she of serenity
When sails through teeming fog peered,
Weaved she her intricate melody,
Beauty such the sailors teared.
Loved they her song so heartily
Lest turned away their souls did sear.

Her voice upon the waves adorned,
Loomed vessels by the waterside,
Cliff by ebony sky so mourned,
Ship wayward plunged by potent tide.
Never did cognition dawn,
With rocky depths did they collide.

Came through the mist the telling wood
And gladly sang to him did she,
Where on the bow the sailor stood
And became the anomaly.
He at her call unsheathed his hood
And love met tenderly.

How the dark the stars awake
So did his eyes his face alight,
She reached for to strong arms embrace
Against obsidian night.
In her heart she did ache
To behold such a sight.

For what in her he fondly woke
Him alive and well she’d keep.
To her he gifted one auburn rose
And would again return to sea.
Her chorus rang and drew him close,
Both by verdant love set free.

Alas, hers was a siren’s cry
On the rocks echoed her symphony
The cliff cloaked by onyx sky
And on watched she so bitterly
As on the rocks the wreckage lie
His absent breath bid roar of misery.

With her tears did the ocean rise.
When next a boatswain came a-listening
Her perished love had made her wise,
Their vessels on cliff’s edge splintering,
As ‘fore their deaths they’d see her eyes
Where farewell’s sorrow lay glistening.

When I was five years old

on Halloween,
hoarse from cackling and laughter,
my throat pinched as Mama showed
pictures of wide-open mouths
full of black, decaying teeth,
throwing out the sweets
I strained my arms to carry,
filling my bag with unsalted walnuts.
脑子会长聪明的 (your mind will grow sharp),
Mama placed a brain-shaped
nut on my palm.

As Mama swirled the rice bowl
under the kitchen faucet,
water filling with white grime,
I saw pieces of chipped, rotten teeth
blending between grains of brown rice,
a premonition of my gluttony.

When my tooth began to wobble,
I dumped my rice into the sink,
pressing the mush down the drain,
my stomach churning.

自豪– pride

When I was ten years old,
after I’d won my first piano contest,
Mama fought all praise with a constant response
of 哪里，哪里 (not at all, not at all).

When I asked Mama why she wasn’t proud,
she told me of a girl
who embraced applause,
grew arrogant in return.
One day, she collapsed,
face cold and gray,
yellow, stringy flesh
dribbling out her ears and mouth.

When her stomach was cut open,
there was a rind of white winter melon,
seeds sticky from freshness.

Each performance,
my hands felt stickier on the grand piano,
until one day,
the keys I had memorized were gone,
replaced with black seeds
placed uniformly on white melon guts.
Mama’s voice rang in the dissonance,
I was overconfident,
and now a seed was firmly planted inside me.

Mama refused to give me glances
until we reached the parking lot.
When I begged her,
the piano disappeared,
turning into the inside of a melon,
her voice cracked with anger,
你太天真 (you are too naive).

I didn’t cry until we returned home,
clutching my stomach
in the upstairs bathroom.

欲望– lust

When I was eighteen years old,
after I left for college,
Mama bid me
bring back a pale-skinned,
slim-faced Chinese boy.
你必须想未来 (you must think of your future),
masking her demand
with a caring tone.

The summer I came home,
Mama showed me pictures
of a family friend now engaged
to a man with glasses and neat hair
wearing a silver necklace and cross.

I couldn’t tell Mama of the girl
with long, rosy hair
round, sunny cheeks
she was amazed
by my white smile,
didn’t despise or fear
black, crumbling teeth or
the melon in my stomach,
caressing me to sleep,
held in the safety of my dreams.

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your
son.”
– Luke 15:21

Growing inside me,
a baby-toothed smile,
a girl I always dreamed of holding,
pressing my skin to her cheeks.

Grains of white rice swirl
between my fingers,
a young girl bobs in the water,
fragile and wavering.
How can I save her from drowning?

My phone rings four times,
a soft gasp seeping through the line

妈妈，我还能回家吗？(Mama, can I still come home?)

For you calm every storm with a smile,
I never wanted you to cry.
As sweet as cake on a birthday,
your breath brings back dead plants.
Radiants happiness like children in a toy store,
never a dull moment.
Softest, most gentle touch that wipes away tears,
you never went out without my hand.
Calming as the shore meets the sea,
laying on the couch next to me.
Blooming cherry blossoms on a cozy, spring day.
Gust of wind on a hot, summer day.
Like a shining star directing the way home,
To the person you once were.

And I say, and you say
Let’s fill it up! fill it up, this

Endless white
Expanse between us
The chasm of sadness. Life threw a curious one:

Dark gray Manhattan alleys
Scattered shades of
Quiet June trees

Caught in the undertow, a
Deep yearning
Unravels.

Unrepentance can be a stark
Yellow cab
Abandoned for the night

Sunburnt city, the Gotham
Of our times.

*
Anant Dhavale

A love that shows up everyday
The routine that holds the key,
Hard work I’ll never regret.

I’m infatuated with my results
Blood sweat and tears,
Adding life to my years
Leveling up, surpassing each tier.

Stepping into position
Accomplishing all my marks,
Who would have known this is where true love starts.

SELF!

Submitted by N.Mariah

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man—
not just any man,
but the one who waits in the quiet corners,
the one who does not rush to claim,
who lets the music rise and fall
before he dares to reach.

I have waltzed with fools and shadows,
spun dizzy beneath reckless stars,
given my hand to fleeting smiles
and mouths that lied sweetly in the dark.
But the last dance—ah, the last—
I keep close,
tucked in the secret chamber of my heart,
untouched by clumsy hands or careless charm.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows the weight of waiting,
who understands that the final song
is not a hurried thing,
but sacred—measured in heartbeats,
in the hush between breaths,
in the knowing glance across a quiet room.

For the first dance is for the eager,
the bold, the untested.
The second for the curious,
the hungry and the hopeful.
But the last—oh, the last—
belongs to the patient one,
the one who stays
when all the music has faded,
when the lights are low
and the floor is bare.

Again I’ll save the last dance for a man
who knows this truth:
that the final step, the final turn,
is the only one that matters.
And in that moment—
when all has been spun, spent, and stilled—
I will rise, smiling,
and offer him my hand.

For the last dance is not for the world.
It is for him.
And for me.
And no one else.

your face is a peach
in this softened coral cloud
of dimmed lights and no fuzz
there’s no pit, no pare

your lips curve like the moon
a waxing gibbous softly smiling
to cast lights and shadows
across your tilted jaw

you’re wrapped in silk
but there are no sheets
just pointedly curling legs
and dancing pastel fingers

so when I close my eyes
I feel your vined limbs
wrap me up, tangling
like ivy through my mind

I have brown eyes,
Because I come from mother earth.
I get around, just like any other dirt.
My daddy stay gone like the wind,
And that is why the sun will shine and he be’ (Annie B.) smiling.
And when it rains, you can feel his pain.
And that is why mama cries, and she can make anything.
And that is why my eyes R brown.

©™Midheaven Subconsciousness©