C. Desirée Finley

Falling off horses

I wouldn’t want my falling off a horse laid
right next to my first good kiss,

or my wedding day when my (then)
husband went off to smoke dope

with his chums for 20 minutes
laid next to my 1st prize in photography.

And, I wouldn’t like the memory of me
saying, “I’m dying to see you,” said

to my dad the day before he actually
did die laid next to my mother’s

asking me at fifteen if I’d
taken her birth control pills,

me looking at her like she was nuts,
which apparently, she was. It’s spaces

between things that help us retain
sanity, a modicum of space holding it all in,

a closet of sorts. Here’s the thing, I want
to put that closet somewhere closed

maybe give it a combination
lock or bury it deeper or somehow get it

to stop swinging open randomly, with
the scent of marigold, or how the ocean

sounds at 7:00am or the way at the
beginning of snow there’s a hush and

then it begins one single soft flake at a time.

C. Desirée Finley (Fin) is a fiction writer, poet and artist now living in a small hilltown in western Massachusetts. Her poetry is published in Straw Dog Writers Pandemic Poetry and Silkworm 14 and 15. Fin was accepted into Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in 2018 for fiction but says her poetry and writing has lately been influenced by the presence of a mountain in her backyard. Find her at FinleyWrite.com.