Under The Duvet

By Danielle Bowen

The shadows they lengthen as day draws to night,

The light cannot penetrate, try as it might.

Your eyes they deceive you as things are not there,

The monsters they taunt you to enter their lair.

The darkness descends and cloaks any small clue,

Silences sounds and doggedly taunts you.

Just as it seems that your torment won’t end,

Your rescuer meets you and things will now mend.

Light works magic, unveils and unmasks,

But war is not won as night weaves new tasks.

Ready for you at the end of the day,

It is only the morn that can take it away.

Autumn

 

Brown, shrivelled leaves litter the floor

 like dead dreams of a forgotten youth.

An unwanted reminder of maturation:

the end of summer;

the end of happiness;

the end of life.

 

The hopeful ones still cling to the branches,

but they look out of place now.

We are just waiting for them to loose their grip

and come fluttering down to join their dead brothers.

As they settle, sorrow will settle in us.

But soon they will be lost underfoot and we can progress on.

Again.

 

The Obituary

Once upon a place up high.

I twinkle like a summer’s day sky.

A shiny perfect memory

From before the days when death claimed me.

 

Death does take without remorse

And from his grasp your grief springs forth.

All that remains lies in sweet recall

Of times that now montage my fall.

 

Life did falter for you one day,

When I was forced to go this way.

But do not pause, do not follow,

Life would be nothing, if not for sorrow.

 

When forced to grieve we live the most.

In remembrance lies the surest dose

That we shall continue to the morrow,

Singing sweetly of our sorrow,

 

Of the burden we did bear.

Of grief, we bore the largest share.

We are human. We are faulted.

One day our condition will be halted.

Beginnings

By Danielle Bowen

Hello paper, pleased to meet you. I’m pen. I brought along my friends imagination and experience too.

Now, I may just look like a dense, impenetrable fluid leaking my shadows over your chaste, pale face. But, you see, you are my canvas and I am your paint, and together we can create masterpieces. If we so choose. We are the tools or the necessary ingredients, you could call us, needed by our new friends here to unleash them. Geniuses they are, but tethered, and without us they might well wilt and die.

            Don’t worry paper, you are more than just the backdrop and I more than the inky swirl. We do all the work and act out the performance that our mute acquaintances cannot. We can reach hundreds, or even thousands. The swirls and squiggles I mark across your fortress make letters and these letters make sentences and these, in turn, make scenes. And these scenes gather readers, which understand the scrawl. And we, we are the storytellers of the masters, and this journey begins with us.

So, shall we continue?