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pay attention – 101/1000

May 21, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

pay attention, they tell me, pay attention to the things you hear
like the birds singing, or coffee shop chatter, or crying
and if I pay attention, they tell me, I’ll contain multitudes

multitudes of words drown me like the rising tide and
I can’t keep my head above water so the words are swallowed
and then they lift me buoyantly back to life

there they go, floating along the waves, the words
are boats that steer themselves and I just have to
pay attention as they pass as if writing poetry were that easy

pay attention, they tell me… Read the rest

where i come from

May 2, 2026 / Cheney / 1 Comment

Where I come from the earth was turned and tilled
by my grandfather for years while he grew

apple trees, blueberry bushes, big fat purple grapes
on vines over an arbor, but there were ugly things too –

the bees that attacked when I went for an apple, and
those fat green tomato slugs he’d burn off with a blow torch.

Even then, I thought that was crazy, and I was right. Some
things were not normal, like living with them, and mom, and nana,

four generations under one roof, which gram treated like
a miracle from her Catholic god … Read the rest

every morning

May 1, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

You sing a new song every morning.
In your thin teeshirts and loose shorts,
you’re a sleepy singer, but your eyes are bright.
Remember all those Saturdays and Sundays we
woke up and rolled into each other’s arms?
That was always my favorite place to be.
Wrapped up in you and blankets and love,
sun shining through the window, welcoming us to the day.
You sing a new song every morning.

From Audrey Gidman’s monthly poetry prompts: Write a soloem. The poet avery r. young created a form called the soloem (so-lo-em), a Chicago soul poem. It’s a 9-line … Read the rest

April 19, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

you look so innocent with your soft blue eyes and kind smile, no one would believe you’d do the things you’ve done to me, but here we are anyway. me here, you somewhere else; we stopped sharing our locations and now i have lost you more. but something inside me still reaches for you, despite your trickery and trampling of my heart, some thin strand of hope for another chance reaches – and so i tamp it down again. and again and again and again.

April 18, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

i put you on a podium,
celebrated your investiture,
wore your crown of thorns
and bled down my face,
my tears red, soul dead,
i kept wanting this so
long after you didn’t
that i missed when you
started slipping away
and by the time i knew
i was losing you
it was too late and there’s
really nothing worse
than a missed
opportunity

life raft

April 13, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

i used to hold on to you
like you were my life raft,
like you were the only thing
keeping me afloat when all
i wanted was to sink

but i couldn’t count on you being there
when things got rough,
i couldn’t trust that in you, i’d find safety
because i never felt safe with you

i thought it was sand that
slipped through the hourglass
but now i feel it’s more like water,
cold and powerful and sacred
until the moment
it pours from your hands

grayscale photo of barbed wire — Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Boundaries.

April 10, 2026 / Cheney / 0 Comments

Describe one positive change you have made in your life.

Boundaries.

What are boundaries? I used to ask myself all the time, and then laugh hysterically because I knew I had none, and a lack of boundaries is what was making my life so hard.

My boyfriend and I, well, no. Let me rephrase that.

My ex-boyfriend decided he no longer wanted to be in a relationship with me.

He said “this is as far as it will go” and that’s not good enough for me.

We are going to have to live through the hell of sharing a space … Read the rest