Self Portrait in 30 Years (a poem)

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Self Portrait in 30 Years
By Michelle Garren-Flye

She sits on her porch as people go past,
taking notice of what they bring into her past.

Little bits of their lives that pepper the now…
a tired mother…a crying child…now it’s all past.

Her son mows the lawn now every two weeks.
She likes it best when one week has passed,

when the grasses breathe rustles and chirps
echoing in her heart like songs from the past.

Those days when everything hurt so much—
if only she’d grasped that one day they’d be past.

Her daughter brings groceries, unpacks them inside:
“mom, come in, the summer’s heat is long past.

You’ll catch cold out there in the autumn breeze.
What keeps you outside when supper time is past?”

She smiles and takes her daughter’s dear hand,
hopes she’ll never know this longing for what’s past.

She could have dreamed up a magic spell back then
and stopped precious time before it had passed:

when she was a happy, tired mother of three…
now a lonely woman thinking only of the past.

She searches the stars for Orion’s sword belt,
Longs to fly to their light, leave this ache in the past.

Congratulations, it’s a ghazal (pronounced “guzzle” not “gu-ZAHL”, much to my disappointment).

Ghazals are hard to write due to their rhyme scheme, which involves repeating the same rhyme over and over. It can sound monotonous or forced. I’m just getting started playing with ghazals, so if it sounds monotonous or forced, I apologize.

The inspiration for this poem actually comes from a house. I used to walk by this house and see a little, old lady sitting on the front porch. I often wondered what her story was. I waved at her a few times, but before I got the nerve to stop and speak to her, I saw an ambulance there in the middle of the night. And then the little, old lady was gone.

I have no idea what happened to her, but her house is going through a major renovation. The porch is still there, though. I like to think she was lucky enough to spend her last days sitting on her front porch, maybe thinking of her loving children and eventually slipping away into her memories of past glories and loves.

Maybe that will be me someday. Because even if it’s painful to remember past sweet memories, it’s definitely better than not having them.

The Blue Cord: Tale of an Evacuee

Posted on September 13, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Yesterday, my family and I fled our home on the coastal plain of North Carolina. We made the decision on the spur of the moment, and if my son hadn’t started college this fall and I wanted so badly to be with him, we might not have made it. So I know why others stayed.

I’ve heard it over and over. From well-meaning people and authorities and news reporters. Why would you stay? Why would you risk your family’s lives that way?

Indulge me in a little story. It’s a different story than most that you’ll hear about evacuating, but to me, it gets to the heart of why it is so difficult to leave. It takes place after we’d spent days getting our house ready for the hurricane that we anxiously tracked day after day after day.

It takes place after we packed our most precious photo albums and possessions and what we’d need to survive a week away from home into the cars with two kids, two dogs, two cats and a bearded dragon and set off for the Airbnb we’d found that would allow our small farm to take up residence.

It takes place after we arrived safely and told our family and friends that all was well and walked the dogs and fed the cats and ate a frozen pizza at midnight, smiling because we knew we’d see my oldest son soon.

It takes place after I got ready for bed and as I reached into my bag for a charge cord for my phone and found the one I’d brought—and suddenly my world felt like it might just fall apart. A blue cord, that I’d bought because it matched my bedspread so well. It was usually plugged in by my nightstand. It didn’t belong here in this little house and I desperately wished that I’d left it at home.

And that’s when it hit me. Home really might not be there anymore. That charge cord might be all that was left of my bedroom decor. And yes, it’s a trite thing when compared to life and limb, but the nerve-wracking week of preparation and vacillating between staying and going, the exhausting drive to unfamiliar territory where all we can do is wait until we find out if and when we can return home all coalesced for a moment in that blue charge cord I held in my hand and I wished with all my heart that I could be back home.

We know we did the right thing. We heeded the mandatory evacuation order and left. We are not in danger of anything except being inconvenienced as we wait and worry about friends and possessions we left behind. We are together and that is what matters. But every time I look at that blue charge cord, I am homesick, and I know why those who stayed did so. It’s not about possessions or greed or foolishness. It’s about home.

They stayed because they needed to be with the world they knew.

A Little Romance for Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2018 by Michelle Garren-Flye

Writer’s note: When I say little, I do mean little. I used to write flash fiction—stories less than 1,000 words. Mine were often half prose poetry, half story. I set out this morning to write one for Valentine’s Day, sort of a little message to potential readers that it’s never too late to find a new author to love.

Other People’s Memories

By Michelle Garren Flye

The letter crumbled in her fingers when she pulled it from the pages of the old book. She smiled. She loved finding things in the old books she bought that belonged to their former owners. She’d once found a third-grade report card of a U.S. Senator in an old copy of The Hobbit. She often found bookmarks, grocery lists, recipes and little scribbles. She treasured these bits of other people’s lives, keeping them safe in a drawer of her desk.

Her husband didn’t like it. He said it was like taking something from a graveyard and would surely bring bad luck. He didn’t understand the draw of the tiny pieces of history she found. But because he loved her, he let it go. And because she loved him, she kept her little crypt of old memories quietly, without comment.

She read the letter and thought about how her husband would like it if he let himself. The book had belonged to an author he admired, so the letter most likely had too. She could leave the letter there, let him find it when she gave him the book. But would he see it as a treasure or a dark omen? A bit of the past come back to haunt him.

Maybe it was her chance to share her love of the old, but in the end, she decided it would be best to protect him from the accidental discovery. And she put the letter away with all her other antiquities, locking the drawer with a golden key.