Who are you here for?

[Jadie Jones]

A lone hawk watched me walk down the street, perched at the top of a bare tree, and I knew that death would touch me. It was a sinking feeling, my guts sliding into my shoes an organ at a time. I tried to ignore him, but he wouldn't ignore me, uninterested in the field mice that skittered through the tall grass that grew unchecked on the vacant lots where houses were once imagined. "Who are you here for?" I whispered as I thought back to every last conversation, instantly checking off those that ended with kind or selfless words. Death seems most interested in claiming souls weighted with untold confessions. I watched him for a reaction as each name dashed across my brain, but he granted me no telling gesture before spreading his wings and leaving me behind.

[Jadie Jones]

thank you Kristine and Gita!! It didn't turn out quite like i thought, but it was the best way i could capture the way the encounter felt.

[Kristine_ES]

wow. really wow.  really tense and it started with the second sentence, i slid right down there with you. 

[Gita]

This theme is hard to write fresh because so many poets and writers have done it before -- premonitions of death or a crow or raven watching from a branch, etc. But when you wrote organs slipping one at a time I thought Bingo!  You did it.

 

[Jadie Jones]

thank you @Bolton! i'm a nut about never parting tense for this very reason. Supersititious to a fault :)

[bolton carley]

love the line about souls weighted with untold confessions.  yeah, it seems that way.   i have those feelings, too.  always scary.

[Jadie Jones]

Thanks ladies! It actually happened on a walk the other day and I just felt like it was an omen of something bad. It made me worried because my mother was on her way to my house and we live about an hour apart. She was just fine - but then 2 people in my network died that morning. It was very spooky.

[Teresa]

Provocative question and exit.  It leaves a feeling just hanging here over my head, keeps making me look up.  Very nice. 

[Angela]

I love that kind of paranoid, guilty feeling you put out there for us to enjoy.