Life moves at its own pace, and sometimes you find yourself wanting to jump ahead of the clock. To stop waiting and start living. Maybe it feels like there’s more holding you back than helping you forward. Maybe everyone around you is moving too fast, or not fast enough. If the confines of your life ever feel like the inner walls of a coffin, then my poem is for you.

“Magenta Evening”

It’s a purple of exotic hue, this evening sky.

My rent is paid, just barely so. I watch

and lean on the bannister from twelve stories high.

I gaze beyond the edge of my cage,

past the structures that frame the ideal view.

A rogue wind lifts the smell of my neighbor’s sage,

so fresh, but I’m allergic and prefer wild mint.

By dinnertime she watches her show, heats her kernels,

but I eat late and last night she didn’t.

It seems my magenta sky’s been sliced and creased

by the scarlet streaks which eviscerate her image,

though her protesting gusts have ceased.

A melodic tone bursts forth from the couch premature

as my sense of seldom-reached peace implodes,

my fund-raiser demanding some sort of repayment, I’m sure.

I turn from the scene just until I step in and jab “cancel”,

disregarding the way his brow would scrunch in disapproval.

He thinks that he needs to support me, his damsel.

If I could sprout wings I would soar through the eye of that sunset,

not like the pigeons of this grey city, but a scarlet-winged phoenix.

Still, the chains of this life are too strong and I’m not ready yet.

By Chelsea Monk