Tabula Rasa
I need to empty my mind, discard the remnants of last week’s rainbow, toss the sauce that wasn’t thick enough for Sunday night’s spaghetti, throw out the song that won’t stop popping up every few minutes, the melody echoing loneliness, a something-gone-wrong-song like a train tunneling through the mountain of my life.
I need to stop, look, and listen, ease the danger of being railroaded, put the brakes on anger gripping me every time I see a troublemaking fanatic on television or hear about a life lost for nothing. I could sleep if it were ever quiet in my head instead of being the all-night bar for lost causes, the haven for abused animals and children, the 1-800-help number for all my friends’ problems, and the factory of face-offs for everything from cancer to religious zealots. Also, photographs of sunsets, trees, old barns, and butterflies—Stop! They play across the screen of my mind like I am an IMAX screen. And Words, I’d like to march them to the wall and let the firing squad of frustration swat them to the floor like flies caught in the backwash of the fan blade. Commas, periods, question marks, if I could only imprison them under a rock so their endless antics could no longer play through my head.
If I could make a pinhole, a small incision to drain the indecision, the choices I don’t want to make, the forgotten thoughts, deeds, words that pop up long after I need them. I could purge the people who constantly meet there as if I’m a social gathering place, push Facebook pundits with all their causes, and pitiful animal photos through the hole so they could reside someplace else. I need to leave decades of clutter on the floor, empty my mind, layer it with fresh seeds and soft spring rain, grow a new lifetime of memories, neat and orderly that would only appear as I need them, and they would never, ever talk back to me or speak out of turn. In my new brain, they would all live in harmony, keep the same hours as I do, and finally, I would get a good night’s sleep!
Patricia Hope
Patricia Hope’s award-winning writing has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Guideposts’ Blessings in Disguise, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Southern Writers, The Writer, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Agape Review, Pigeon Parade Quarterly, The Mildred Haun Review, Blue Ridge Country, Mature Living, The Gargoylicon, Upper Room, Home Life, The Tennessee Conservationist, Liquid Imagination, American Diversity Report,and many newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. She has edited two poetry anthologies and published two novels, including Lonely Way Back Home (2017). She lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
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An interesting journey into frustration and the agony of a thought filled mind unable to step from chaos to calm, as we've all likely experienced. Thanks Patricia.