Moving Home1st Place in the Poetry Writing Contest
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Issue 18
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I didn’t know panic attacks
could last months, pulling the hairs of everyday acts, like nestling fish filets in spitting oil or spreading peanut butter on Saltines-- shrill joints, trembling muscles, and repeated expectations that the move-in would settle into normal chaos, and not be the hurricane that seeds its own storms, the essential eye not holding. I thought the ranch layout would be fine, as my husband and I’d adapted to many styles during five decades, but it’s too tight and paneled too, and my breath comes short and shorter. I turn left at hall’s end into my bedroom (like then) same high, narrow, windows, begrudging sight and distance, if not light. |
TERRIE JOPLIN taught English in public schools in Washington, Illinois, and North Carolina, and holds an MS in Education and a National Board Certification. Her poems appear in Door is a Jar, MER Online Folio, ONE ART, SWWIM Every Day, The Westchester Review, the anthology Recovering Greenness, and elsewhere. Terrie and her husband reside with their multi-generational family and four tuxedo cats in New York. She enjoys gardening, painting, and road trips to geographical wonders.
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