by M.G. Warenycia

A caterpillar is marching circuits

Around the window fame.

The chestnuts and linden lush

And perfumed with Jasmine tea

Smother the humdrum Sturm und Drang

As the hot and irritable City seeps outward

Like water squeezed from a sponge.

“The world has been getting smaller,”

She says the truth.

First school, then university seemed to fade;

“They still exist,” she secretly suspects,

Recalling walking past daydream backgrounds of

Faces and voices—but that was long ago.

A year? Two?

Club nights and parties became occasional effort

And then a crime.

All the places become Google images

Alone; all the people become pics and posts.

“The world is getting smaller”—

She paints to chase away the thought

And to lure ghosts

Of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Elsewhere

To make her feel familiar.

And there’s YouTube and Netflix,

Poirot and Studio Ghibli in HD DVD.

It helps and then it doesn’t

When, in the evening through the still-dark morn,

With the cold-sweat panic

To be Somewhere and Someone one isn’t.

Brew some coffee, put on a podcast, paint:

Emergency measures

Wielded with flagrant frequency

That would make dictators blush.

On the canvas, a moth

Has seen a light,

Flaps to fly

And hits the wall of a jar.

The jar is getting smaller…

The breeze at the window is so fresh

It feels wasted

On sleeping nostrils,

The light beyond so beautiful and bright

It aches; she wants to scream

But no one can hear her through the jar.