Now Playing: “Don’t Know Why,” Norah Jones

Word Raccoon can’t get her words to stand up straight today
She tried a poem or two, but they laid down on the job

Then she wrote more flash fiction about those two doomed darlings

Bonnie and Clyde

who seem increasingly unstuck in time

which was amusing and alarming to write

because what do you do when the timeline won’t behave?

The words felt sideways
She kept circling the phrase “my shape of love”
It wouldn’t settle
Wouldn’t stay put
It wanted to haunt instead

There are days when writing poems feels like

chucking tiny pieces of her soul into the void

Today she doesn’t want to mosaic anything
Today she doesn’t want to submit, flinging that clinging word stuff to anyone, anywhere, else
Today she doesn’t want to “stay weird” thank you kindly to the off-map journal that said so
Today she wants to…what?

Doesn’t matter.

Tonight, Word Raccoon wants to sing
Not perform
Not posture
Not press her ear to the earth for answers

“Don’t Know Why” is playing
the Norah Jones version she sang once barefoot

and maybe too earnestly at some little gig

no one remembers now though the rehearsal was recorded,

and she remembers belting the soul-jarring line

“You’ll be on my mind forever”

WR didn’t plan on getting trapped in a lyric
but the song showed up tonight anyway

You know how it is
Some songs have long shadows

I suppose I ought to invest in some ear plugs

Word Raccoon’s not planning on stopping singing any time soon;

Someone once told her she should keep singing

This is definitely not a poem

And you’re so vain (but what’s so wrong with that?)

And you already know this song is about you.

Wait, that’s a different song, isn’t it?