it broke the day before I needed it
as if on purpose
mystic Hungarian folk guitar echoing in the chambers of my mind
when I bought it
never changed the strings in the past 6 years
didn't bother to learn how
the seal of the Classical Guitar Society on the wood
like a diploma
my guitar, better educated than me
$300 collecting dust in the corner
now that the string has untangled itself and let loose
like a curly hair
mangling the neat straight lines of its neighbors
and the orderly rows of the frets like
bricks in Victorian houses
now that the broken wire has splayed itself over the whole body
like a fresh tattoo down a spine
I find my guitar more interesting
and realize I've always liked double bass
better
About the Creator
A Little Bit Of God
January 2026 I thought I’d spend the night in neon lights on grainy film but my brother is telling me how an eternity of hell is caused by prevalent peace, and who am I to disrupt such a thing? So I found myself in the same skin with the same sights, wondering whether or not I am one of those– do I feel peace? Do I expect more when it is gone? It being everything. We’re running out of time but the car is belching up something strange and we’ve got God in between our eyes nodding along to every apology and plea spoken for our friends and loved ones– they don’t know any better, they’ll come around eventually. He’s telling me about barbed wire guides around lives and ties and wives and lies and, look, the snow is starting to fall so I guess we better hang up soon. But it’s been too long. We’re building fields of skills and realms of distrust and these moments are only seen now, can no longer be read as words, only swept with eyes upon oil pastels or smudged charcoal. It’s a painting of an evening, like Daniel’s soles in Edgar Degas’ mind, but if anything is just it’s the lack of unrest in skin like His and lives like this– okay, so maybe five hours on the phone is a lot if you have a job and you’re trying to cook dinner, but only one of us falls into that gorge and only one of us believes in what lies beneath it. My brother tells me things that sit in my spirit like half an ounce of prospect and a squeeze of bourn, how he tells God to let me in: despite my sins, despite all the moons in between these calls, despite the burning in both of our throats. I do feel peace here. I also feel that my peace is a subpar window job, a pinky’s strength avoiding blizzards inside the bedsheets. I’d like to spend more nights like this, with contrasting disaster living between a speakerphone, and God finding some space in between.
By Olivia Dodge4 days ago in Poets
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