Like They Do

His response flew out of his mouth like a reflex, 

so swiftly that it was obvious he hadn’t had time to think. 

He made a clumsy attempt to recover,

like men do,

but it was too late. 

The rogue words had already been launched and the futile subsequent statement, 

meant to intercept the first, 

didn’t bring them back. 

He pretends the words were benign, invisible and silent, hoping she hadn’t noticed, 

but clearly she had. 

She wants to pretend too, but doesn’t know how because she, 

like women do, 

sometimes thinks too much. 

So now they’re stuck. 

Minutes pass. 

He has already forgotten his words, 

like men do, 

and does not know why her eyes are sad. 

She, 

like women do, 

knows she has extraneously extrapolated his seemingly meaningless words into malintent, 

but doesn’t know how to let them go.

Because,

she thinks,

perhaps the words had more meaning than he thought, having been fired from his gut they way they were. 

You can follow me on Twitter: @CeceliaHalbert

Excuses

Wow. It’s been a really long time since my last blog post. 

On Christmas Eve, I started to write a Christmas Eve poem as I’ve done in previous years, but then family showed up and I decided to pay attention to them instead. The poem I started to write wasn’t anything different than the previous two anyway, so there wasn’t much point.

Days go by and I frequently think to myself that I need to write but then I don’t and for the same reason. I’m busy paying attention to the important people in my life. 

Oh sure, you say, "You have to MAKE time to write."

And if you’re saying that right now, I say, “Fuck you, I’ll write when I want to.”  (The words ‘write’ and ‘exercise’ are interchangeable in that sentence, by the way.”)

A couple of years ago I was writing a novel. And a full-length play. And a bunch of little plays. And blog posts. And sonnets. 

Know why? I had nothing else to do and so I was trying to manufacture a life. 

Now it seems I actually have a life. I still write here and there… a song, a poem. 

And at the moment, a blog post. 

When life doesn’t make sense, writing is an excellent way to organize and categorize the chaos. 

At the moment I’m happy for the current lack of chaos, and therefore happy to be living more than writing. 

               Dammit. I just remembered how good it felt to write.











You can follow me on Twitter: 
@CeceliaHalbert