Emmie Christie
There’s Nothing and No One To Stop Me
The house is clean so there’s nothing to stop me
The dishes are fed and asleep
The curtains are bare and looking out sweetly
The nightstands are two whiskeys deep
There’s someone out there who is calling
There’s nothing and no one to stop me
From sallying forth
To the weak!
I slink to the parts of the streets
Where no one would think to perceive
The sides of the shadows of leaves
The end of a breath and the breeze
Where no one sees
That I snip off the edges of grief!
Those feelings that are dead and out rotting
In the father who cannot stop falling
From grace and the top of the ladder
From how his hip and pride shattered
I clip where it used to matter
Back to where it now matters
I steal back to the brink of the road
And come to a raccoon
Washing a flow of red down the drain
She croons a slow, growing refrain
For her litter hit by the rain, the dreadful
Motorized rain
I sit and I witness her pain
As it pours so that it won’t mold into blame
And that’s all she needs is someone who sees
I slip back to my house, where it’s gathered
The mess and the clippings of sorrow
The dishes are awake and all hungry
The curtains are bursting with grief and
The nightstands sway, both hung over
I take time for the house to recover
Before I sally forth to the weak
For there’s someone out there who is calling
And there’s nothing and no one to stop me
_______________
Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in various short story markets including Daily Science Fiction, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. She graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013. You can find her at www.emmiechristie.com or on Twitter @EmmieChristie33.
Author’s Backstory and/or Crafting: This poem began, as many of my pieces do, with a ball of undefined emotion that I tried to unravel as I wrote it. I felt a vague sense of wanting to represent lancing a wound, or taking the edge off a hardship, and the protagonist having the power to hold space for it so that it would dissipate. I have many people in my life who are going through extremely difficult times, and I wanted to give my character the ability to help with those kinds of things, a true fantasy-escapism. I used the metaphor of a house holding the grief and pain as a way to show that the character was taking it in, as they and the house are co-dependent beings, but in a healthy manner that releases the pain after acknowledging it. Of course, in real life, everyone has to go through their emotions and do this on their own, but in this little escapism poem, my character could help that along.
Editor’s Comments and/or Image Credits: Abstract image [Photo by Bia W. A. on Unsplash]
