Keith Woodruff
Monday.
I punch in at whatever the fuck sharp. Cha chunk cha chunk; the time clock eats my card. I imagine Sisyphus punching a clock, drawing a severe, here we go again breath. In some images he dons a loin cloth, in others is naked. Looking up and down the line, I imagine us all naked, pushing our boulders.
Same.
I lean into my boulder. We sort a variety of “what if” and “what might have been” widgets into various DSM-5 color-coded bins. I have been reading haiku. That is my attention span. Starting a new bin, I think: missing you / these trees rain for a long time / long after the rain.
Same.
On break, I stare at the vending machine. Because it is kept empty (no one has an appetite) I see myself reflected clearly in the glass; it appears I am caged inside it. The silver corkscrew coils, usually festooned with crunchy snack bags, are bare and seem to impale me.
Who knows.
Driving in, I had to sit through three lights while police-shaped people trafficked a zombie run through the intersection. Faces painted white or green. Smears of red gore around their mouth holes. I wanted desperately to run with them.
Wednesday?
When grief working, it is easy to feel alone. Thus, we are a loudly visible people, all wearing highlighter yellow vests so we can tell the kindred crushed souls from the clipboard/couch folks who pop out like cuckoos and tell us encouragements. In Britain, the 2025 Minister for Loneliness is Stephanie Peacock. I stuff We should have a Minister of Grief into the suggestion box.
Just pick one.
There is a quote oft Facebooked: “God breaks the heart again and again and again until it stays open.” What good is an open broken heart I ponder – not for long though, as any drifting of my thoughts can set me behind on widget quotas. God’s whacky. (Eyeroll emoji).
Stephanie Peacock.
In the early days, at my rawest, I thought grief work the opposite a labor of love. With or without wind, these blossoms fall. This, from my open broken heart, goes in the suggestion box, too. Now I think it the quintessential labor of love. I am here at all the time o’clock for the boss, my son. For him I punch in. I punch in. I punch in.
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Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX and tends a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His poetry has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, New World Writing Quarterly and Rawhead. His flash in Wigleaf, Does it Have Pockets?, JMWW, Emerge Literary Journal, Identity Theory and it is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review. Read him in BSF 2017, 2019 and at www.keithawoodruff.com. He was awarded a 2018 Pushcart Prize. @keithwoodruff.bsky.social