Family Time
heartsontheline.substack.com
Every poem in Hearts on the Line stems from an anonymous person graciously answering two questions: “what is my greatest love?”, and “what is my greatest fear?”. The rest is just my poetry…
Life Is a Word, and Love Is a Sentence. Pass the coffee, will you? My mouth is getting dry; I’m tired of the news of how many have died, of flying helicopters and tyrants out for blood. Of thirsts, I have another: some coffee from your pot. Now I’m ready for some bread – like my children and my husband. Our union here is sacred – I hope they know how much I love them. Now I’m waiting for the jam – some strawberry will be nice. Some has landed on his hand – now my mouth is getting dry… Oh gosh! I spilled the coffee. What a mess! What a mess. And it looks just like an army, on this sacred cotton map. They need to stay away! They can’t have it! They can’t have it. Marching messengers of death. This is sacred! This is sacred. My son hands me some napkins to lessen the invasion, as I’m looking to my husband, who has licked away his wound. I guess peace is relative when a war is looming over such a warm and friendly table. Let’s soak this tablecloth… Thank You to the Human Spirit…
I would be grateful if you shared your own love and fear on this link…
It’s anonymous and could lead to the next poem!
This woman shared that her greatest fear was war coming near her home.
To add some context, at the time of writing this, fortunately, neither her or her neighboring countries are actively at war…
Because of this, I decided it would be interesting to make the poem less about war, and more about the fear itself.
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Her greatest love was her immediate family.
I decided to represent that with them gathering around a table.
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I didn’t know it at the time, but I now think of this poem as a transition point between how I started writing these poems and how I would come to write them following this one.
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All the best.
— Hasse
Wow, i absolutely loved this one