Am feeling sad. I couldn't pretend otherwise.
This has nothing to do with my picture-book rejection. Please! No, this is something else.

A thunderclap came along and stole my soul.
So now, I may have died a little.
I am a billowing curtain in the shadowed light, a black prism shut into myself.

But the poetry. I wrote these incredibly dark poems in my early 20s and then it eluded me for the longest time. A poem like yesterday's.
And this morning when I didn't want to wake up, these were the words that shot into my heart:

(The character & objects are fictional - I don't smoke - but the sadness is real.)
And not to worry. I'm still buried deeply in my play & will run some script by you all, soon.)

I look for a corner, curled

up like a cat,

somewhere

and ready to die...

I poke at the edges

with

my bent claws, my

heartbeat feels

like clutching at

straws, and even

the cracked cement

will have nothing

to do

with me. My breath

stale, the

sickly smell of wine

and tobacco reek,

make

bad company like a

grunting homeless

tramp.

Mesmerised, the

watching walls

protest, their signed

petition - a poison

mural and

decry the folly of

my existence, yet

sticking up their

noses to my promised

resurrection. I

curl up, suddenly

smaller in size

then I ever was

but my swollen

heart still grieving,

still growing,

until the lamplight

lullabies off at

last, as dim

as nightlight, so

sharply painful

yet cradling me

the dying

beautiful.

- susan abraham -