Tag: regret

Oklahoma

Published on by Susan McElhaneyLeave a comment

Picture of Oklahoma

Hell beckons me home where the promise of comfort soothes my restless feet and calms my aimless heart. The demons speak in familiar tones reminding me that I belong to this desolate, dying land where only the slightly insane can exist but never live. It is here that generations regenerate the myth that this is somehow  a reality worth preserving.

It’s a strange and difficult place that grips my throat and clinches down on my gut, a constant reminder that it is both my lifeline and my impending death.

Strangers

Published on by Susan McElhaneyLeave a comment

While I could not cry in front of you,
I cried once for you – in front of strangers.
But then again it could have just been
the vodka, or life’s regrets – perhaps
it was only allergies that caused
such a commotion of compulsion.
Who knows what God’s thinking in
these rare moments of humility.
I suppose we all must pay our dues
for living and dying and breathing
and trying. Who knows but God,
the devil and that damn song
that keeps playing in my head?

Sitting at Powell’s

Published on by Susan McElhaney3 Comments

I sit in this bookstore
where I feel detached
from the young and
too young to be the old.
Miles away, memories
come in with the fog
and rest their toes at
the edge of the water.
The only promise of life
is the sound of fury
from beyond what
only the lost can see.
I can only hope my
ghost is always there,
walking the shoreline
and dreaming, neither
young nor old, but
timeless in this melody
that never leaves us.

A Catch in My Throat

Published on by Susan McElhaneyLeave a comment

There’s an emotion rising in my eyes, a catch in my throat, a whisper I cannot shake found in these halls where I connect too much with your ghost, a figment really of a girl on a beach, toes in the sand and that smile I remember most, among so many senses I cannot forget.

I took for granted she would always be there when the sun set and the sun rose until the day she wasn’t.

Denied and Deprived

Published on by Susan McElhaneyLeave a comment

And before I die I assure you I’ll cry over that first kiss, denied and deprived over many oceans and beyond anyone’s notion of what could have been, preventing what should have been.

I suppose it all comes to its destined end, despite our legacies, our family, our friends. For the heart wants what it wants, when it wants. You can fight it, just can’t hide it from the places deep beneath the places you hide from those who cannot reach it.