Poems from Samantha Seto

Cursed Blessing

Monitor electric lines go flat,
silence overwhelms, steady pulse
whispers death into my sleepless eyes.

I prayed for three nights, crying into her nightgown,
the ER remained keeper of bad news.

Flowers and miniature trinkets lined the bed,
Get well soon, only nothing existed.
I counted my breaths, pushed back heavy tears
and guilt that poured out of mind.

All I could ever imagine…
dreams of chases through grassy fields,
play hide-and-seek in our backyard.

Only this time, I couldn’t reach my hands,
run, lift above ground, to catch her.
She was gone.

 

One Summer Day

She whistles for her dogs.
To her kitchen to warm the kettle.
To her dresser
on the wall opposite her bed
opposite the window, beside the door
as it opened she felt its grain,
when she lifted & dropped the pineapple wallpaper,
when she traced her pillow’s lime-green palm
trees painted on the drawer fronts,
how the dogs whined & sighed.

Wool socks under the dresser,
she waits on the kettle’s low whistle.
She nods in the morning’s thick blue with
rising pedestrian dome of clouds.

Quiet but for the finches,
elm & fence-line, crosswalk & lawn
obey covenants.

Below the children on streets
taunt the doves in the evening by morning
tease the grass: rip with the toe, pull with the heel.
Boredom.
And the birds.
She settles back into her knitted-back chair.
The worn place frays, softly weeps.

Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, The Screech Owl, Nostrovia Poetry, Blue Hour, Ygdrasil, Coffee Table Poetry, Soul Fountain, and Black Magnolias Journal. Samantha studies creative writing and is a third prize poet of the Whispering Prairie Press.