Trigger Warning

    by Larina Warnock

This isn’t what you think it is.

It is, instead, a memory drawn from a well

of memories so deep as to mingle with ghosts.

It is a shadow crossing

paths with the light just right, so that flickers of yesterday

become quicker than today, become the ray

of whatever isn’t shining through the window,

something similar to something we’ve felt before, but not so

much more than a disguise for the prayer we don’t feel a right to.

It is déjà vu, but less exact,

like a pact was formed between morning and eve

that the day will forever be

neither and both. It is ether, a flask

filled to the brim with emotions forgotten and unforgotten,

longer felt, no longer felt. It is stronger than aged

brandy, but weaker than the edges of a dream.

It is reverse masonry, chiseling away at brick,

dusting the remainder of mortar from our skin, finding it

filling gaps between who we were then and who we are now,

who we wanted to be and who we became, one tragedy and another,

my tragedy and another’s, some other

feeling forgotten to make room for something old and something new.

It is holding up a shattered mirror

and seeing some past version of myself,

trying again and again to create an end

that never did,

that never can

exist.

© 2015  Larina Warnock

+ previously published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

Larina Warnok is a mother, wife, teacher, and writer who believes strongly in the power of forward motion, advocacy, and reaching out. Her work has appeared in The Oregonian, Poet's Market, Space & Time Magazine, and others, as well as in Touch: The Journal of Healing. Her chapbook, Guitar Without Strings, is available from The Lives You Touch Publications.