Welcome to Flowers & Vortexes Online A Vortex of Creativity © 2020 Mikey Webb © 2020 David Brooks On Grief August slips cool into a September porch swing. Come sit with me and have coffee at 3am. We'll speak without shame, for we've been intimate for years - since you found your place between my husband's hips and mine. We are one another's quiet addiction, each the other's lingering suicide. I recognize pain, my reflection, in your eyes, and yet I draw you in. You are my Marlboro man, here to save me, but there is too much smoke - summer stinking and thick with kudzu vows. Autumn rings on some distant curve, and with this dreaded friend, I pray. Together we mourn midnights into dawn on the whispered tune of our blessings: Hurry, on the west wind to the seas, move them with the tarnished arc of the harvest moon. © 2006 Erin Monahan *This poem was previously published in Flowers & Vortexes, Issue I (2006). ...