This is a slightly modified memory.. Inspired by someone hah I think he will guess whom.
I am having a rough time now, to be honest, so this is just a bit of escapist prose. I hope it makes someone else smile.
our little secret
Morning and I’ve been sent to
the little market with the stray cats guarding it,
the sleep still in my eyes. There is the money in my pocket
that I must not lose and I am calculating if there will be enough change to buy myself a single piece of sugarless gum wrapped in a paper with my fortune written on it. She said she wouldn't mind.
And the fortune paper will be midnight blue and the sky is plain old blue and the road is crunchy under my slippers and it is already getting hot and my knees are already grubby from that little trip and fall I had when I raced down like I shouldn’t have.
Returning with cats’ tail hairs stuck to my ankles, newspaper-wrapped bread still hot under my one arm, and fortune-bearing gum tucked in my pocket for good luck, my grandmother leans down to tell me a secret:
There’s a single plum left waiting for me
on the lower branch of the plum tree,
should I wish to go quickly and pluck,
have it before breakfast.
So I do.
Everyone else in the house is waking up now and the sweet
And the sour and the stick is still on my tongue
and the corners of my smiling lips.
Well written ; )
Why do I love this so much? It's infuriating not to be able to explain. The way it is written, it seems like prose, but it is unmistakably poetry, and good poetry at that. Maybe it's the combination of memory (real or imagined, who cares?) and the condensed style of the language - the last section is particularly good.
I'm glad you enjoyed this. :)