Swift Uplifting Rush

So, this ended up being one of those circumstances that made me glad I had a notebook hanging around. I had read a bit about the prompts last night, and they stayed with me in my subconscious until this morning. After I dropped my husband off at the office and drove myself to my doctor’s office, this poem started coming out of my mouth. Thankfully, I had a few minutes to sit in the waiting room and get out as much as I could, and then I finished it over a bagel before heading to work. Great morning.

 

I’m not going too much into this, but this whole thing is meant to be one piece about two people (except where it’s not). The working title is “Swift Uplifting Rush.”

 

i. I wish I could tell you

That I was careful with your son’s heart

But it flailed in my hands like a fish

Until it hit the floor

And we were both left standing there, all
Oh well!
And that is why I sent him home.

ii. I wish I could tell you

To keep my number in your phone.

You could have called it

The Last Person I Could Talk to so I Won’t Do This Horrible Thing

And then you could have told me what you were planning,

Given me the chance to laugh and say

You just got that neck
Don’t ruin it.

i. I wish I could tell you that
I stopped using all those terrible words in my poetry

And that you were one of the sets of hands that kneaded me into the writer I am now

And your bakery sneaks its way into my pages regularly.

PS – everything is, in fact, better with cheese.

ii. I wish I could tell you that

Your parents were right,
That a life in line wasn’t for you.

Yeah, you looked like all those guys in the commercials –

Steel gaze, wood jaw

Pyrex heart

But by the end of it, you were like the ones unseen

In pieces, in the ground.

PS – leave a note next time.

i. Thank you for the rides to the vet

To everywhere
For bags of groceries

Boxes of sangria

Opening your library doors for me.
I borrowed so much
And what I forgot to return
I cling to.

ii. Thank you for lying about your age

And being so constantly interested in what I had to say

For giving me my first trip on a motorbike

My arms around your little boy waist.

At least if we had crashed

I would have been protecting you.

One day we will meet again

Through the eyes of someone else

And I will dive on top of you,
Crush the bones of you,

And I’ll absorb the blast so no one else has to suffer.