And Back Again
Paula Appling

I.
A cup of tea or a river rock.  An autumn leaf or a snowflake.
A shooting star: not much more than a memory.
Waves crash onto shore, recede, repeat.
Craters on the moon …
On this planet, in this epoch, nowhere is safe.
 
II.
Voices in her head, insistent, chaotic.
She longs for peace, stillness.
Anywhere but here.
A spider’s filament anchors her to this time, this space.
 
III.
Thoughts coalesce into oblivion.
What if …, she asks.  But there wasn’t, couldn’t be, an answer.
Eastern blue sky, relief to the eye.
 
IV.
Dry air, a demon, shrieks across the empty landscape.
Vexed fire hellions consume and burn.
 
V.
Scream into the void.  Don’t wait for the echo.
 
VI.
A door to anywhere.
I want to be the void.  Truth?
 
VII.
Expecting. Excepting. Rejected.
Funny how time stretches … and contracts.
You understand, don’t you?
 
 
continued …

 
VIII.
Impermanence is a fact.
You want … what? I yell.  No one answers.
The same backwards and forwards.
Nonsense, all nonsense.
 
IX.
Nothing is impossible. Unlikely … perhaps, but not impossible.
Reality.  We are all connected.  We are one.
The mirror echoes.
Mutable … drips.
This     life.


 

                                                                                    ~ ~ ~
​                                                                                                                JULY 2026