Alexa Lash

So in an attempt to find inspiration, I asked my Facebook friends to provide me with a prompt from which to be inspired. I promised I would create a post around each idea I received some time between January and February. So here is the single post based on the only prompt I received—from my mother. The prompt: chemistry.

This isn’t Chemistry

If you’re under the impression
that there were sparks,
fireworks,
a chemical reaction

then you, sir, are mistaken,
your sense briefly taken
to places unknown.

What this was:
a momentary lapse in judgment
your judgment,
my normalcy…
smiles, kindness, the occasional,
“that’s awesome”
sans subtext
that awesome could be the enzyme
to speed up the reaction
of our love.

This isn’t chemistry.

And no, there exists no desire
to study anatomy,
biology,
to experiment
dermis to dermis,

to hypothesize how our kids might look,
your chin,
my everything else.

Oh, boy, this is above
and beyond
what was intended,
the reach of your imagination extended
from solid to liquid to gas

getting into the atomic mass
of every word I say,
to reach a nucleus
of something not quite there.

I know deep down you have to be aware
of the lack of a single bond,
of substance,
of chemical composition;

that chemistry
was never your best subject.

Pass it on...

The dinosaur at the end of her bed was green; her socks, magenta.
She leaned over and clutched it,
her hands gripping onto its skin, fuzz rather than scales,
and making it dance—
all big legs and tiny arms aflutter,
jaws open in a contented gape.

She clutches Rufusaurus Rex when
she needs to feel closer to the center of the earth,
from the crust, to the mantle, to its inner core
feeling for
some semblance of depth,
the way her socks dig into rivers of carpet,
the way her toes curl into rivulets of synthetic fibers,
the way her crescent moons atop her nails dig into dinosauric fluff
all claws and roar and stuffed
from tail to teeth.

Prehistoric comforts
that hide beneath mountains of pillows and clothes
she meant to put away,
but Closet Mountain still stands,
a pile of t-shirts at its peak.

Instead, she builds blanket forts extending from bed to floor,
crawls flashlight in hand through an entrance of fitted sheet
and drags Rufusaurus Rex behind her,
past hills of homework,
deserts of girly and grown-up expectations:
a girl and her dinosaur
little arm in little arm,
her socks, magenta.

And together, they roar into the dark.

Pass it on...

The wait is all-consuming, hours pass and people: chargers in, chargers out. They’re pulling wires from the wall, bobbing heads to alternative rock, whispering to each other about how long they have until they board. They wait, transfixed on the passage of time. The flight delays. They look angry. Their faces soften. They go grab a pretzel or a glass of wine from the appropriate food vendor. A man peeks up from a laptop. A woman glances up from a book every five minutes or so, checking on her purse and backpack. But she just watches them, unable to help the analysis of humanity. To her, the differences in people are so spectacular; each person who waits the makings of a book.

Pass it on...

The pillow is about the length of me curled up,
knees locked on puffs of cotton
like a child climbing the base of a tree,
shimmies and uncomfortable starts;
until a groove is settled into,
and sleep or success comes in an easy wave—
for found is comfort.

-A

Pass it on...

The Older We Get, the Younger We Feel

Sometimes, there’s a dream:
we’re eight or ten or twelve,
hands interlaced like tufts of braid,
all smiles and soft voices and giggles in the dark,
hiding under blankets, building tents from couch pillows
as if they’re castles made of stone.

Some days we’re on a pirate ship,
crossing oceans, pools that undulate with the wind;
or on a carousel that spins, pirouettes.
We dance, mimicking the merry-go-round,
following the waves in a side-by-side sway…
how could you know there’d be a day
when the music or the breeze would quiet;
that reality would hit in tidal-esque form,
the ship tilting,
the carousel jolting into a brake,
and we stand facing each other,
glances interlaced like tufts of braid.

But deep in dreams these promises are made—
to make our dreams come true:
me and you,
our hands, our eyes, in tangles.
The world, our ship.
The wind, our music.

Pass it on...

@okwithwords A dear friend asks you to help them rob a bank. #writingprompt

— (((david golbitz))) (@davidgolbitz) June 17, 2016

I asked my friends for a prompt, and as always, Dave obliged (thanks, Dave!). I apologize for the lateness of utilizing this inspiration…

Let’s Rob a Bank

You and I
aren’t Bonnie and Clyde:
we’d rather live through the ages
together—your hand in mine,
the other hand holding a bag
so full of cash,
our private stash
to carry us to an island,
an ocean,
filled to the brim with salt and sunshine
and better days ahead,
better breathing
than car and cliff and dead.

Let’s rob the world of happiness,
steal moments like golden bars
from bank vaults, your hand still in mine,
and run away
from everyone and everything,
freedom in the form of bullet
or a ring,
instead of car or cliff.

Let’s rob the world, but first:
let’s rob a bank.

Pass it on...

I feel like I owe you something, Internet. So here is something:

The space between how you feel and I feel
is like the forced spaces between paragraphs,
so subtle and small,
but make so much of a difference
that you, a lover of style and design and words, notices immediately
that there is space—
so subtle and small
but so there.

In language, space can identify thoughtfulness or anger or sorrow.
Space can be hurtful, can be necessary
to carry the weight of everything
you can’t say
in words.

I feel that space between how you feel and I feel.
We float like jetsam into the infinite deep
of saying everything
and nothing at all.

You don’t have to tell me you need space:
it’s there, tangible and wide,
accessible by anyone who isn’t seeking
space at all,
rather a universe of not-space, of ever-there, of presence,
of anything but [_________].

Pass it on...