Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

August 13


Phillips Head


What’s stuck in makes the thing. What sticks out is all that’s seen. I can tell so much from what is left out, yet there is much I will never know, can never tell. The twist, the give, the opening to variation is known, but never acknowledged. Somehow indecent if spoken or thought of too loudly, insinuation is ignored and society allows us to focus on what is held after or due to this act. We have built the whole world on what we can screw together, but we will merely hallow this, never embrace the fact until it falls apart. Then we exclaim over the rawness of how it caused us to be turned around, the risk and wrongness, ignoring just how much good can come from just a simple screw.


Acknowledge rain clouds as puddles on lay-away

*

MEETING INVENTORY

The manicurist at the meeting sits and does her nails.
The discussion goes on around her as she files away.
Cell phones go off for people
Who can’t put their lives on hold for their sobriety.

The knitter knits.
And the dissenters dissent.
The chatting chickens and grumbling grouse
All these populate the meeting.

It has taken the first half of the hour
To take everyone else’s inventory.
I have the remaining thirty to take my own.

You are reading selections from More Sober on the Way to Sane and Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault