Six Months of Darkness

A slightly dark feminist poem about a women's journey with postpartum depression following a story line of The Shining. Creepy, off kilter and a definite shift from what I usually write! Enjoy!

Six Months of Darkness

Six months with black eyes

Onyx and obsidian shards cut to the quick

like the buried knapped and faceted

arrowheads in her wrist.

Six months of thunderstorm stares follow

nine strikes of eclectic anger -

And milky way sighs like feathers falling out.

In my mind, all alone,

listening to the quiet click-clicking;

finding a friend in the wind that whistles over the keys.

A winter time blizzard howls through the valley of my talents

And my gown billows behind me in the ballroom -

I - a Hollywood diva from the 40's like Lana.

But I was not waltzing among

A zillion adoring flashlights -

But falling headfirst and slack-jawed into

The red bulb Polaroid

of the Devil’s favorite apparatus.

He catches my profile at dusk,

always unsettling are the scarlet eyes.

In ruddy dawns I languished in my solitary hole.

Ullman keeps me here in my cell -

Filled with rats with no tails

and bats with no ears,

Mimicking me as I searched for my lost

eyes rolling on the floor -

In nightmare terrors

of myself acting normal at

The Overlook as I wink seductively at

red ghosts swinging from the chandeliers -

My garter showing under the hem,

as he dips me again and again.

“So, Welcome!”

I cry to the new Concierge -

my own reflection adorned in

white gauze as if marrying -

Keenly aware that my

toe-less feet look tiny

beneath my clattering knees.

Repeating:

“All work and no play”, to myself -

Like Jack at the typewriter;

All the while wondering

where he has gone with that axe of his?

Then suddenly,

liquid torrents of crimson

light up the hallway:

There! At the end -

A pair of two little boys

stock still like Russian dolls.

Their eyes not blinking

but their lips part in question marks.

Once again, they do not know

where their lovely mother bones has gone.

“Go to her now, my dears”

She’s waltzing one last time

at the ball before bed.

"Let her kiss you goodnight"

with the unsettling touch

of a kitten’s rough tongue lapping milk

Out of your hollow wooden cheeks.