Coming to Terms
Plenty of ways she walks toward forgiveness, the evening pink, layered and still. She feels the trap of time, the sorting of past and present. Intention is often masked, the mask a farce or a lie. She was far from the harm she’d done, willing it to false memory, allowing herself the even breathing that permitted sleep. An arrangement of lives, like pieces from a game, shifting, overtaking. She notices an early moon, a linden tree, the sweep of a small brown bird. She’s coming to terms in a sleeve of silence. There’s really nothing to see.
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.
Nicely done, Mercedes. A very somber and insightful tone that reveals what one may do to justify, and/or bury the memory of, something in their past. Thank you.