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Writer's pictureRoss McKeachie

Promises of May

Updated: Sep 13, 2022



I committed to wearing flip flops

or walking barefoot

only a moment ago.


Now it’s September, Labour Day

and the warm long days

I’m just getting used to

are promising to leave us.


I put on my boots today,

walked around in them without tying the laces,

just tucked them inside like sheet corners.


I felt tall, solid and cool

in the soothing September rain

where people, shaken

from a frantic summer dream,

fell to the earth around me

like drops coming to rest

in their sheltered rainforest nest.


Now, unlike yesterday,

the promise of May

is in the future, not the past.


Sun fading from my grasp

like the time she went cold,

pretending to love me for a while

until neither of us could deny her absence.


And what remained?


Only clouds of loss,

vague emptiness,

flip-flopping mess,

witnessless,

tearing at the sheets,

in a barren bed

that used to be bright red roses.


Used to be…


September’s refrain.


Used to be me now I’m what?


Used to be…


September, you melancholy dream.


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