In An Attempt to Navigate the Chaos
There was no regulation and so I went full abandon. The sky opened like a flower. I rose and fell, developed wings and went through a gentle rain like flour through a sieve. It was October, then January, then late March, I don’t know how. Time was an old-fashioned game with missing pieces. I preferred this, whatever it was, even if it was nothing. All so rich, so detailed. I had left the hullabaloo for an inter-space which had calmed my long-bruised nerves. I had forsaken the expectations of justice – how freeing. Nobody made sense and that became my cocoon. I tucked in the wings and went down to the insects where purpose was measured. The scale of things moved like a river, quick here, slow there, no end in sight. Occasionally the notion stopped me in my tracks – this was all miraculous and where had such luck descended from? Did it matter? Not until it would, open-ended, agreeably invisible.
Mercedes Lawry
Mercedes Lawry has published short fiction in several journals including, Gravel, Cleaver, Garbanzo,and Blotterature and was a semi-finalist in The Best Small Fictions 2016. She’s published poetry in journals such as Poetry, Nimrod, & Prairie Schoonerand has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize several times. She’s published three poetry chapbooks as well as stories and poems for children. Her collection, Vestiges, was published in 2022. Her collection Small Measures will be published in 2024.
This reads to me like an incredible spiritual journey, spiraling along a river, within it, and above it, simultaneously – where expectations no longer play a part in our passage.