Pressed flowers,
in old books,
thick with dust,
and the scent of age.
Pressed flowers,
are a memory,
of what you once saw.
An attempt to preserve a moment,
even in it's death.
Yet moments cannot be pressed into paper,
they will not remain what they were.
Just as the petals you so artfully placed into these books.
Years later,
you find them,
and in excitement you search through them,
remembering the one you thought most beautiful.
But when you find it,
it isn't how you left it,
it isn't what you remember,
and you aren't sure if it was ever real.
The old pages have changed it.
It's bleached with age,
without the touch of sun,
and never will it hold,
the radiance you remember.
About the Creator
Laurel Kellum
Another life. Another struggle to persevere through whatever lot in life has been dealt. I find myself back here, hungry for nothing more (nor less) than self-expression.
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Beneath My Fingertips
To forever hide from reality in fantasy achieves nothing. It is easy to make the mythical seem fantastic—as it is in its nature. But what about reality? How do you take reality, and make it a place worth being? Here I daydream, and then I can't sleep. Or I sleep, and then I can't dream—day or night. I live in this shallow pool of nothingness, and it grows stagnant. I grow uneasy—restless. I know I am rotting away in this static place. Sometimes stones fall into my pond, and I watch the water ripple in familiar rings. I know where they begin—and I know where they will end—crashing upon the same rocks and molded shores that have always been here to keep the water still. And I watch from a hidden place, these cycles that never seem to break. The ripples come—and they are new and they are lovely and they are enchanting—and then they fade away. Just as all of the others have. Is it the knowledge of the inevitable that makes them fade so quickly? Or is it the knowledge of the inevitable that makes them linger? I want to run away from these rotting rings of water. Away from these dams and walls and sickly stones. Away from the fallen green trees as they decay to the touch—like death beneath my fingertips.
By Laurel Kellum6 years ago in Poets
Disarmament
They say there's no atheism in the foxhole. While I wasn't currently neck-deep in a river of soft sediment, I was still praying to whoever would listen. Why am I doing this again? I would ponder while staring at the device that in no less than a minute could be my undoing. I scanned each and every variable panel and commonplace button as I watched the bright red L.E.D ticker countdown. No wires to cut, no code to put in, there was only one way to stop this infernal machine, and that incurred perfect timing.
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