Flexible and The Dance by Molly Silverstein | micropoetry | #thesideshow

Flexible

It has been unbearably hot.
This evening Olivia texted
about the three cockroaches
she encountered in her basement.
She managed to kill one bug
but the other two scurried away.
You are 12 miles upstate
but I carry your voice with me all day.
Later I watched a video of a roach
contorting its armored body
to slide under a door.
The emptiness I felt
yesterday and last night
are effectively gone now.
I am all armor.
}But it’s not the emptiness
that frightens me —
it’s the morphing.
One day you are everything
then nothing to me.
One day you, too,
will slip beneath the door.

The Dance

Early autumn day and finally the air’s cooled
the air is like the trotting sound
of two women’s heels
walking in time together

I dreamt I lived in a big colonial house
with a spiral staircase and golden walls
and in the house I could take your words
and do what I pleased with them