Denial

    by Christine Klocek-Lim

She thinks she is dreaming

about the past. The heartbreaks

and the disabilities. The disasters

that reinvent themselves over and over

until despair becomes a familiar creature.

Ordinary.

And each night, she lets the cat out,

watches how the small body rockets

into the darkness. Each morning, she prays

he comes back, broken perhaps, but still

capable. Keeping the door unlocked

and propped open. Just enough space

for dreams to come through.

© 2010 Christine Klocek-Lim

Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry and was a finalist in Nimrod’s 2006 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, December 2009). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Terrain.org, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, Touch: The Journal of Healing, and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry, serves on the Board of Directors for The Externalist—A Journal of Perspectives, and her website is www.novembersky.com.