Is That Your Feet I Smell?

Have you ever been obsessed with anyone? I’ve been happily married for two decades, but I remember what obsession is like as if it happened only yesterday. I’m lucky because I have a written record in my poetry, and I’m lucky because those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.

In AA we say that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’ve been there and done that. In fact, I excelled at doing that. I was willing to do anything that might plug the vast hole in my psyche. And sometimes obsession accomplished that goal. It got my mind off me and centered on you. But in the end I was always stuck with myself again, and I wasn’t red-hot company back then. So the cycle would replay itself, until I finally found myself in an AA meeting where I heard my story told a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, and I discovered that the hole in my psyche could be filled in healthy ways.

I keep this poem around to remind myself what I used to be like. It’s 55 words long, which exactly fulfills the G-Man’s Friday Flash Fiction requirements. Fellow 55ers can be found here.


Woman Tracks Her Runaway Lover

Twilight falls on me
belly to cold ground
nose pressed to the
imprint of your foot
searching for the scent of you.
I am in hot pursuit:
However cold grows your trail
I’ll not abandon it.
I am the shadow
which trails behind.
I shall lay hands on you.