by K Weber

 

Ready the metaphorical sawback machete.
Back-track to scouting, campsite preparation.

You are the scamp of the earth-ends: been
through worst-ends; scrimped and scrappy.

Crimped posture-trudged, you made yourself
smaller than a pin’s head and just as quiet.

You have breath-held and lingered long
as an ellipsis… waiting to wade across water.

But the cost was too high to keep things running,
electric, after you leapt through kitchen’s fire.

Then you coughed the singed crust of ovens,
this planet. Kept going. Started your own blaze.

Called it light despite hands that needed you
to know hurt. Backpack sags with red memories.

They drag along what was once a tube
of lipstick, credit cards. Now knives and knives.

They got too close. What stung worse when
they finally ran away from you running away?

What if the earth pauses, pregnant, but still-
born. We just wait. We plan our next escape.

A ripple might wash us away, muddily, uneasily,
to the next chance at survival. Or we slide away.

And that pin was pulled from a grenade.

 

 

 

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K Weber is an Ohio writer with 10 online books of poetry. She obtained her Creative Writing BA in 1999 from Miami University. K writes independently and collaboratively, having created poems from words donated by more than 300 people since 2018. K has poems featured in publications such as The Hooghly Review, Writer’s Digest, Fevers of the Mind & her photography/digital collages appear in literary journals including Barren Magazine and Nightingale & Sparrow. Much of K’s work (free in PDF and some in audiobook format) and her publishing credits are on her website: kweberandherwords.com.