Bio
Timea Deinhardt has lived by her pen all her life, under a variety of bylines and pseudonyms. She is – at this moment – in France where she continues to devote herself to poetry, fiction and a hybrid she sometimes calls nanoprozetry. No pets, just an abiding fondness for Lapsang Souchong.
Trigger Warning
Last night she’d had a glass of wine
slept eight hours
was fine – until ten minutes ago
when, alone, halfway upstairs,
she felt herself
vanish.
It was as though she had turned
into a stick figure –
a pipe cleaner person …
no, that’s not it exactly:
more an outline, say
a looney-tunes body where the colour
can drain away – right off the screen!
as if she had been left standing
– scribbled on an easel –
some cartoonist’s sketch
and she was – though she wasn’t –
here, on the bright barren landing
gradually filling up
with
emptiness…
the hollows of her viscera
made her want to retch
the palette that was their life
[mostly yellows and tan]
all of it to be sent swirling
swirling out –
for tragedy is
where comedy is not
somebody
[who ? she’s just forgot]
says
kick the dog downstairs – you know, that gray plush thing
I’ll throw it in the laundry, you should give your sister a ring
she says she can keep the kids ’til Tuesday
and then Dan can drive them over
it all sounds so reasonable
as if it should be familiar
but she can’t remember any children
just a young man on a swing
listening to her
and all of a sudden her cheeks are wet
and she hears words in her head
[as though someone else had said]
what I must remember
is that I most need to forget
The summation in the final lines is stunning. You capture the disorientation of irreversible change with common details. A kind of wild sadness to this piece. Excellent writing.
Thank you. A wild sadness, was indeed precisely what was intended