Lit of the Week 118!

Old Souls
SilverInkblot

Old SoulsDoc says I’m an old
soul, with my postcards
and letters, and waste-no-words
policy. Doc says old souls still make eye
contact instead of playing with iPhones,
mirrors that stare back, and tell
us who we are by knowing
who they are.
Doc tells me I’m an old
soul in a young body, taming
wild Internets and bringing my words
to heel like a triple score
in a game of Scrabble.
That I was born in the wrong
decade, that I was meant to punch
typewriter keys like a boxer,
that the twenty-first century
wasn’t made for old souls like mine.
Doc thinks I’m too old
to be twenty-three, constantly forgetting
the barriers of my few years.
Like that I never wrote about myself
until he gave me moments
worth writing down, and cared
about the person behind the words.
That I learned who I was by learning
who he was, and drew a timeline
of intersection points where each
node became a poem, and each poem
became a stepping stone.
Doc unearthed an old
soul in my notebook.
Old like a favori

That I was born in the wrong / decade, that I was meant to punch / typewriter keys like a boxer  



Shimmer
Falareste

ShimmerI have a number of friends, two of which are Seven and Rain.
Seven is a rock collector. He travels here and there and through every corner, dives through caves and scales waterfalls in search of rare stones. When he visits, it is always with a pack of mining tools and spelunking gear. His tools do not include a canary; I have yet to see a dust mask. Yet, when he visits, it is always in clear-throated health. (In lieu of lung disease, I asked him if he feared cave-ins instead. He said no.)
Rain is an artist. He searches fewer caves and climbs fewer waterfalls than Seven, but is nonetheless widely traveled, being a connoisseur of sweeping vistas and stately galleries. When he first visited, he asked to see the program I was coding (and at an impasse on). In response to my surprise at his interest, he said, Good code is like art in its elegance. He glanced at my code and remarked that I was missing a pointer. He was right.
When they visit, they leave g

 Sometimes, when Rain visits, he explains coding dilemmas in flashes of brilliance, his pen dancing like waves over the paper.



Songbirds
Raven-of-Prophecy

SongbirdsThe boy with a beating bird heart. We used to play
Crusades in my garden every week after Sunday school.
Our mothers, doused in tea and flecks of flour, would
Calmly knead sourdough and wave through the
Window as we skirmished through the seasons,
Irreverent to the real reasons of conflict. The victor
Claimed a crayoned crown, boldly gold and glued
With beads from your sister’s First Communion
Gown, and would shriek in reckless joy. But the birds
Never caroused my (few) successes.
Your epithet was “Skylark”. Your mother said it was
Because you were born in the spring, a
Vivacious little charmer and the star
Cathedral chorister. That was true. But I saw
How the feathered fellows too adored you,
Flocking to your feet when you trilled your happy anthems.
You called me “Nightingale” so I’d also have a special sobriquet,
We were teased at St Mary’s for it. By then
There were no more distasteful games on Sundays, only
Friday film nights with other fr

Sometimes, / We would sing together when we walked down the / Long winding lanes to our houses

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