Falling in the Dark

Feel for the penny
when it’s flipped into a puddle,
rotating rapidly through air’s nothingness,
crashing into a solid that liquifies
then, sinking with slow sway
through water the consistency of jelly,
to land in mud,
watery but not fluid
grainy but not land,
and what of the jagged things that feel like rocks?

With each flip, the world expands in grand whooshes
of uninforming blankness, infinite and barren.
Space distorts, stretching like rubber sheets,
unraveling time, contracting moments into lead pills
to ensure that although you are reaching out,
you are still startled when something touches you.

On contact, the objects around you
pop like soap bubbles into frightening clatters
as they fall aways from your touch,
although what you are seeking continues standing
an inch away, waiting to be birthed
into your consciousness from your touch.

You sit for a moment to gather yourself,
baffled at the mockery from your
scraped knee,
aching elbow,
disoriented mind.

You wish for an empathetic magic
to replenish you with light
so you can illuminate the world
and forget to wish for sight
because you forget to rely on it.

 

The Fortune Teller

The girl unfolded her palm like a map
to have her destiny predicted
from crooked lines suggesting mysteries
best avoided in the flesh.

With age, the lines pucker,
casting minuscule shadows over fleshy plains
with crevices full of desiccated secrets
as if in remembrance of the minutes
she shed unnoticed like flakes of skin.

The girl (now woman)
arrived one day,
bandaged at the wrists.
Without hands, she sat
before the fortune teller.

Why did you not foretell this?
 What destiny is there without hands?

The fortune teller became a trance.
Without moving her lips,
she spoke the poetry of mystics,
releasing whiffs of incense from
the cavern of her mouth.

Roads of destiny do not have maps.
They are labyrinths of chances
where blind choices stand as answers,
and fate thrives in every blind spot.

 

 

Lourdes Tutaine-Garcia is Cuban by birth, American by citizenship, Cuban-New Englander by culture. Her laurels include a B.A. in English (Vassar College); M.A. in Corporate and Political Communications (Fairfield University); works that have been published in The Adanna Literary Journal, Avocet, The Hour, fiftywordstories.com, and Metafore; frequent readings at WBFY Poetry Woodshed and WBFY Poetry on the Bay. She was selected as one of the best prose writers in mid-coast Maine by BestLit Review 2018.