Off the Cuff 18: The Brain's Workings & To the Moon

The Brain's Workings

Every time I butter toast in the morning I think of S.
She has nothing to do with toast, not even a toastmaster
club, and I don't know if butter would or wouldn't
melt in her mouth. She would eat grain bread, not white.

She is lodged there in my daily bread, my softened
butter spread. My knife slaps jam like paint, and
still I wonder how she is, what she's doing. In my mind
a blank canvas. She's not an artist either, or writer.

It was only recently I discovered this auto-habit
of thought. I stop thinking of her the moment my knife
falls into the sink and  I bear my toast to the table
after cutting it carefully in halves, licking the knife.

The thoughts vanish and next morning re-occur.
We shared a house in a landlocked country years ago.
We met at University. We cleaned a beach together.
What am I meant to do with these crumbs of memory?

NaPoWriMo  18


APAD 18   prompt: "To __________"

To the Moon

You golden crescent bright in the season
of hoe, secateur, sickle, you cheesy
Cheshire Cat grin, you bright reminder
of universal laws. Driving home, I watch you
pull up the doona on your bed of cloud,
leap out again as we all do, having forgotten
perhaps to set your alarm, get a glass of water.
Then sink again among the fashionably
black and white soft bedclothes, sleep
swinging, sweet chariot, yellow pendant
on a long long long long chain of gravity.