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L. Lois
It Wasn’t Going to Work Out Between Us
I remember the sunshine
on the hill
looking across the bluff
inside the city, tucked away
yardage for a blanket
first year I felt
free to move
lying around reading on a Tuesday afternoon
somewhere I’d picked up
theories on Huckleberry Finn
a book
of philosophical patchwork
I closed my eyes and lay back
thinking of you
the tales you spun
as I painted your fence
a chill rolled down
the hill
beneath my body
and everything else I’d offered up for free
folding the corners square
I packed up the storm coming
piercingly critical, pathologically analytical
just like you’d told me.
About the writer:
L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.
Image: Picnic by Birger Carlstedt (1907-1975). Oil on canvas. 51.1 x 63.3 inches. 1934. Public domain.
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