Pieces of My ReflectionDiscussions of love which were not seen through rose-tinted lenses; there was always pain included. These poems had a certain flow although they were mostly free verse. They moved with a fluid charm that floated you in and allowed you to feel the journey of love gone astray and the crash landing of loneliness that ensues once you love someone and lose someone.
I have to admit that it took me a poem or three to get into the words, as jaded as I am on the topic of love. But these were, for me, realistically communicated allowing you to feel the ecstasy of love, when it’s good and the vacuum of loss depicted in the words. In the poem I Wish, the author somewhat wrapped up how I felt at times, in life, as I was reading.
I wish for numbness
A ceasing of this ever-growing
Ache I have for you
Crystal-clear yet opaque
I can’t understand
Why I utter your name
When my lips part
Caught up in your web…
It goes on to describe the wish for revenge on some level by stating without hesitation:
I wish I could put my hand
In the wound
And cause your body to shutter
In agony…karma
But in the end, she embraces the pain that she feels and the pain expressed by the words she read from her lover as if she felt their pain as well. Or was it the pain elicited by the words of goodbye written and left behind for her to read?
I also enjoyed reading, among other poems, The Last Time which explores her memory of the Thursday that she had last spoken to the perpetrator of her grief. She recalls it was a Thursday because of the mixed emotions she experienced as a result of that phone call, as she thinks back on it. But more importantly, she remembers it was a Thursday because on that day her transformation was complete.
…It was a Thursday
I remember
It was the last time
I answered the phone
With my heart
I could go on from there with the imagery evoked by the words written; but instead I’ll let you read the book.
Reviewed by: Connie Jordan
March 3, 2016
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