Written by Gretchen Filart
All of them alive, thank goodness.
I’m still blocked by one.
Two men still follow me
online. Some doors best remain shut.
Others are left ajar
for a reason. I wouldn’t know
theirs. I suppose it’s why
my eyes can’t resist windows
sometimes, when I long
swallowed my door keys. Outside,
darkness chews the moon.
Slow, painful bites.
When it’s done, just when you think it is
nothing but a waify, dead crater,
warm gold gleams anew
from the center.
.
Gretchen Filart is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist based in the Philippines, where she embraces life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. Her work unpacks the complexities of grief, mental health, healing, motherhood, and love, garnering recognition from the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest and Navigator’s Global Writing Competition. She is currently working on her first full-length collection. Connect with her via her website, gretchenfilart.com, and across social media as @gretchenfilart. She is usually friendly.