Lon Prater lives and writes on the Florida Panhandle, which he sometimes refers to as the Genre Gulag. His fiction has appeared in Writers of the Future XXI, Borderlands 5 and many other venues. You can find out more about him at http://www.neverary.com/notes.htm.

This poem was inspired, at least in part, by a bit of poorly capitalized roadside scripture, lots of standing water left over from one of the many hurricanes last year and a recent encounter with a soccer mom.

Like many of my poems, the association "clicked" while I was driving, and I had to pull over and scribble this one out before I could go any further.

---

when Death was only death--
just a still and pregnant pool
(so much warmer than you'd think)

I dipped my fingers, flicked
them; watched the giggling
waves roll out before

stamping
one foot smack!
down into it, shattering
splattering

its heft

thin and wide

making Ruin a new thing
and majestic
the way any broken up
thing is somehow Bigger
and more Grand
easier to carry
lighter to bear

when you stop to let
strangers breathe in the
cinders rubbed deep in your
cheeks or offer up crimson
shards of heart by the handful
to your friends--

I did that, it was me, my

Lonesomeness

writ larger than your
gratitude
And when the spatters dry
You'll forgive, even me
as Death congeals

around itself and you and I
find smaller hands to wave
goodbye more comfortable
things to talk about than

wayward children grown too
fast and on their own already
(so much sooner than you'd think)