Probably Confabulations
Published in The Blue Nib Literary Magazine
poetry

My words are
submerged
and suffocated.

Intimations
declarations
probably confabulations too

are all murdered
after a slow-motion fall
through the slats of the dock.

I am howling in grief
agonizing over the fatality
of my phone and an entire year’s worth

of attention paying.
The ministrations
from mouth breathers come

pointing out my cyber stupidity.
Did you back it up?
I'm drowning in tears of Denial.

On my knees, face pressed against the slats of the dock
​ I deal out sharp tongued Anger and Bargaining
in a string of profanity laced threats

summoning some benevolent
wilderness scuba diver or really small but
friendly mermaid to rescue what has been eliminated.

Moments of affirmation
Coaxed persuasions
Rumored parleys

Allusions explained
Feuds unsolved
My year was razed, engulfed by water

disannulling, vanquishing
my capacity for forgiveness.
Once the erasure is complete I stew on the deck of our cabin

in the descending darkness
welcoming Depression to the
Bargaining Anger party.

The hills silhouetted
under the luminous Milky Way echo the
haunting wail of a loon calling for a lost mate.

I never should have gone down that Path to the dock.
My Sacrifice at the bottom of the lake really should be enough
to appease the Netherworld, to quell the raging.

But it is not.
I will never Accept that words can survive Cyberspace
and the loon wails with sorrow until the sun rises.

​In the morning I write on paper.