The Secret to Life (From the Back of My Mind) by Celaine Charles

There is always a hum in the back of my mind.
The dryer clanging a cacophony of notes
to a song that should be softer.
When I remember my grandma’s line of laundry,
flapping in the wind.

It was wistful and breezy,
linens with stories stitched into their seams.
Always they teased flight
in my seven-year-old imagination,
temping me to run through them.

The arms of her nightgowns beckoned
to meet them on the other side,
there in the buttercup fields to the north of her land,
under the warm blanket of summer,
I knew I would find the secret to life.

I laugh now, loading the dishwasher,
adding its chime to the chorus of reality.
Years later, grandma long gone to the other side,
I wonder if it’s the same chord from before,
only louder and banging to capture my attention.

To turn the head of this forty-year-old body,
Moving slower now, with temptations at hands length.
I think too much about the laundry, and the dishes,
the certainty of life that calls upon my absolute focus.
I can’t stop for childhood memories, games that might push me off course.

The whirr in my laptop springs to life, because
I might as well get some work done.
My to-do list grows, like the buttercups from Grandma’s field
still blossom, like the north star still signals a shift,
and I can see the signs as clearly as her rose-budded

nightgowns, swaying in the breeze all those years ago,
tempting me to run through them,
their tune a constellation to be deciphered,
if only I could hear the melody through the cacophony
of the dryer, and the dishwasher, and the hum of the laptop
in the back of my mind.

# # #

Celaine Charles lives in the Pacific Northwest where she teaches, writes poetry and fiction, and blogs about her writing journey. She has a poem forthcoming in The Sunlight Press. She shared poems with Tupelo Press and their 30/30 Challenge Project in February 2017. She has three poems published with Nature Writing, two poems in The Seattle Star, and was a poetry finalist in the PNWA (Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association) Literary Contest, July 2017. For more information, email Celaine at celainecharles@gmail.com, or through her website at www.stepsinbetween.com.

Photo: Yoann Boyer

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