
Content warning for references to inpatient care.
Open Window with Breeze and Dahlias.
Sunlight inundates as I sit silent, repose
and contemplate paper cut-outs strewn
all across the floor: little pools of colour,
bright autumnal tangle, walk in
the woods. This one will bejewel a king,
that one evoke a nudity, the crisp turn of
an ankle. This orange rectangle is a paper
thrown: each storyline is possible.
I learned imagination at the hospital:
off-white and peeling off, the walls recite
not a lament but an invitation. If you
could decipher a cloud, you can outline
a folktale in these cracks. Here it is, see:
the face of my mother, and there a wolf,
there a sad musician re-stringing his old
mandolin. I lose, or gain,
hours in these daily contemplations.
my work of scissors and glue sticks now
done, I contemplate a leaf like a branch
of coral, urgent and delicate. No time
is lost that is spent doing nothing much.
Lorelei Bacht lives and writes somewhere in the monsoon forest. Her recent writing has appeared and/or is forthcoming in Feral, Anti-Heroin Chic, Abridged, Odd Magazine, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei.