Taking a break...

The masks and bandannas lay next to each other defying the rules of social distancing

Grocery items on the daily list will stay dormant on supermarket shelves

Watching cable news will be downsized to living in a storage container

The glass that shapes the daily cocktails will go unwashed

The paths that dictate the walk will not feel the soles of my shoes

The rake and trowel will remain dormant in place where abandoned yesterday

The plants that were destined to be potted will remain standing in water

The feeling of loss will be shunted to the side

Diversion will be ignored…taking a break

from Hope

from Aspirations

from attempts to offer Inspiration to ears that no longer listen

I am tired…taking a break from

Zooming or live streams on Facebook

Technical difficulties with the Internet

Trying to figure what needs to be done to stay needlessly busy

Rationalizing my support for local with dollars that are disappearing

Writing just to write

Mindless word games and artificial contrived tasks that the newspaper suggests I do to maintain some semblance of “normal.”

Trying to be in control.

I “deserve a break today.”

***

Today…Wednesday’s poet is Glennise Ayuk.

Glennise Ayuk (photo provided)

Cobwebs (A poem by a doctor who writes)

crazy angles, wall corners, unused spaces,

surprisingly, not all that hard to find.

Strand after delusory strand intricately weaved

by architect the spider -

 A reflex response to disuse.

Life is a dynamic metabolism.

A proactive interaction with its elements

will create the universe you desire.

Passiveness is a belittlement of your worth.

It attracts brother spider who smells the somnolence

and tucks you into a comfy bed of his webs,

which are really prison bars

that keep you further trapped.

More incapacitation, deceptive detention,

and you sit there

calling for help in voices that cannot be heard.

If only...

If only you grabbed the bars by the balls

and pulled off with directed energy,

they will come tumbling down.

Yes, unused muscles atrophy,

and webs only proliferate at uninhabited houses,

and unexplored potential.

They create an unpleasant stickiness at first, really,

but too long and their touch on your skin

becomes a caress…

a deadly one that keeps you complacent

with mediocrity while more and more webs are formed

around your life, growing tentacles

that penetrate and dominate your Circle of Willis,

vascularizing your entire brain with ideas

that potentiate the paralyzing illusion

that your dreams are too big to come true

or that you’re not good enough to pull through.

And sometimes you believe and let loose.

The result is that your parenchymatous dreams turn cirrhotic,

and your wonderful future becomes dinner

to the kankerworms of fear.

You hardly notice when the webs start forming.

They disrupt your physiology in a

non - specific - paraneoplastic - syndrome kind of way,

until you turn around one day and the ugly tumour

of a wasted life is staring you straight in the face.

It is then you’d wish you had cleaned up

when you first saw strand one. 

Because the more webbed you are,

the more intimidated you become

by the little worms called “average” sitting quietly in your eyes,

causing a homonymous hemianopia

and creating a false and friendly calmness

that should otherwise be eerie.

These wobbly helminths become kin,

you even dine with them,

and become too belly full to realize

that it requires a diligent consistency

and unflappable courage to live your life to its best.

Here’s the truth.

There’s fragility in those prison bars,

and fear is too weak to fight you.

You have the ability to build those bridges

and wade those waters,

and frankly the tides are overrated.

Summon your inner strength,

And get the webs cleaned off!

Do it today!

No more stickiness!

* * *

What it means to have somebody hold your soul

You call me trophy

and outlove my shades of fear

that roar ugly heads.

Currents of my doubt overwhelm,

but with your faith are met.



You penetrate through my brokenness

with your healing light,

and teach me truer ways to love myself

much to my delight.



You made love to my soul

long before you thrusted my thighs,

so my muscles recognized your voice

when you whispered “relax”.



You crown each of my body parts

with kisses of its own

creating a magic of ecstasy

that seeps deep to the bone.



You led me on this leap of faith,

which has become the reason I cry happy tears;

as all past pain becomes nothingness

in the face of such intense love.



You kiss my scars.

Call them beautiful strength.

You keep my spirit thriving

that you do.



Forbid I ever question hope

– or the plausibility of miracles –

because here you are, my sugar scone

and how could I ever have known?



You do me happiness

and marginally well – sung songs (lmao!)

You do me laughter

and chunky pieces of joy.



You are my prize. My weightiest prize.

You literally are, my better half.

You hold my soul. You mate it whole.

Forever, eternal. That you do.

Glennise Ayuk is a medical doctor, creative writer and maternal/reproductive health blogger from Limbe, Cameroon. Her writings are featured in African Writer, aaduna, Verbal art, Universal Oneness Anthology and Parousia; and are forthcoming in other journals/collections. She’s been learning (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to paint for years, and usually describes herself as wild, soulful and sapiosexual.

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