The Forest of Despair

Artwork by Chelsea Bednar

You do not want to enter this forest

Though I have dwelt here forever,

I still do not know it

Its labyrinthine trails lead in circles

or straight to nowhere

Time does not follow rules here

Minutes last for weeks and yet

years disappear in a second

Sorrow hangs

like a wet wool blanket

from the limbs of trees

which have never seen the sun

You do not want to enter this forest

I am beyond rescue

I have lived so long in darkness

that I have forgotten how to even hope

for light.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Artistic Interpretations w/Margaret
and
mindlovemisery, Prompt 3, Stigma

Sugar

Playing dress-up

With Nana's jewelery

When I was a kid

Rooting through dresser drawers

For baubles and trinkets

To pose in front of her gilded mirror

Tucked away

Under some handkerchiefs and scarves

And the ever present scented soap

I spy an old shoebox

A treasure too tempting for little hands

Not to open

Inside I find

Not money

Or jewels

Or even boring, old letters

But packets of sugar

Probably hundreds of them

Like the kind they have at restaurants

I run to Nana

Giggling

Ask why do you have a bunch of sugar 

In a box

In your dresser?

I don't remember exactly what she said

But it was something like

"Just in case."


written for May Poetry Challenge, Sugar, Verse in a Nutshell