Quickie Poetry: A Momentary Drama

Sometimes it returns.  Flashes of images.  Questions nagging for answers.
Sometimes it rears its ugly head.  Flashes its fangs and bites deep.

You find yourself wondering what triggered it, given such a wonderful day.
Was it Murakami and his Wind-Up Bird Chronicles?
Was it a fleeting dream whose visions are now too faint to recall?
Was it the memory of a friend you never got to know?

Sometimes you shake away the thoughts.  You remind yourself that's over.  You shrug and just move on.
Sometimes, however, you don't.

Instead you think of how calculating the move was:
How the use of pain and loss was twisted to seduce and steal.
How the illusion of reconciliation and openness was merely a feint
to a deep backstabbing wound meant to never heal.

Sometimes it returns.  And it does with such a vengeance
you will only survive it by reminding yourself what is true.

The past is the past.  The present is far more real.
(And what is real is that things are absolutely fantastic.)
And while, unlike in Dorothy's tale, the Witch isn't dead yet,
you have to remind yourself:

You don't have to carry the house on your shoulders the whole time
waiting to throw it upon her.


(the world is already conspiring to do that for you.)