Writing With a Full Time Job

Monday 4 a.m.
I am nocturnal
Coffee brews, and midnight is long gone.
The birds serenade me with a joyful song to greet the morning.
Dark crescent moons fall beneath my eyes.
One question often arises just before the sun,
"Is it better to sleep for an hour

Or not at all?"

.

Erin Elizabeth Cloar March 27, 2006

Ivory Oceans

I understand.
Opening up to me
Is like opening the door
To a secret room.
.
Anything could be hiding.
Something might be lurking
Somewhere in the shadows,
Anxiously waiting to devour anything good,
And you’ll do.
.
I have never been to the home where you grew up.
I have to imagine the staircase

And you as a child,
Thrown down like a rag doll.

.

Are you still stuck drinking water from a murky creek
While your mamma suckles boxed wine like a Capri-sun?

How can I wrap my mind around you

and grab you out of that moment when you were so thirsty?
.
History is an okay teacher,

But pain is a better one.

Your eyes match mine.

They are hazel

And change according to what you wear.

.
We lie beneath faded stars,
And discuss the distance between life and death.

Your breath feels warm against the skin on my neck,

But your hands are frozen.

They cling to a glacier just below your surface,

While ivory oceans confess your innocence.

Written by Erin Elizabeth Cloar July 2006