Six Months by Lorelei Winters

Six Months

by Lorelei Winters

You used to be an open door I saw down the end of a hall called future.

But because we didn't know the time,

It seemed as though that hallway was being filled

With debris of dirty climbing shoes, career handbooks, a filled journal.

Women and men we never thought would have a chance.

And can we just let the algae in the tish bowls of our lives grow

As if we were two betas in separate cubicles of plastic (getting tank Fever),

Seeing an image of each other but being too dangerous to share the same

aquarium -

right now?

The green grows.

I hate it.

I hate its murky blindness.

I hate to see you fade away.

I hate how we can't simply try things out.

But I've always been taught to be slow,

And that through distance you can't grow.

But the thick, suffocating green grows.

Where will we be in your ten-year plan?

Will I even exist?

Perhaps we will have forgotten

Like all of those people who enter through one stage door,

Say a lew profound lines, sing a proud tune, maybe even dazzle the audience to

tears -

But exit out the other side

And make their way through the cold night to another playhouse.

They made their amazing contribution.

But the bus keeps on movin'.

All you can do is scrunch up your face

And try to remember a few of those lines that moved you.

That had so much power.

That were delivered and said in such a perfect way that you knew you could never forget...

It's not just that the mind is weak,

But that we make ourselves so busy.

We can create so much,

So many millions of ideas and feats:

they swirl around our minds and bodies.

Time takes us and plunges us deep into its power.

New players hop up and down, sing jazz, rock, and the melancholy song.

The hall gets so thick

You'd need a machete to tear at some of those creations you've made along the way

To even think about getting through.

Yet do you sometimes hear that simple line...

Those plain tunes that once made you feel as though everything was at perfect peace

So rare for you now?

Perhaps it's easier to make yourself drown out even that.

You can't have the live symphony.

So you throw away all your classical CDs.

And, well, It's just technology.

So far away from the music halls of Berlin or even Atlanta.

Yet to be completely gone...

The horror!

My English evokes the "Phonograph ":

A story of a nuclear winter world.

But no matter the change of environment.

People still kill to hear the machine play its music.

To remember how it was and somehow believe from out of all this ash

It still could be - the fiery phoenix would rise again.

Please,

Don't forget. We haven't reached the end of the hallway.

In the murk, there's a fish still swimming.

In the down season, the theater isn't condemned.

In the desolation, the symphony is still playing.