James was small, so small in fact
that at times it seemed
his body refused to grow at all
he was barely noticed by
his mother —lost among the
many children
many chores
many responsibilities that
come with raising a family
he liked to climb trees but
often could not reach even
the lowest hanging limbs
so instead he would sit
and think about ways to not be
so small
a party was being planned
for the favorite son’s birthday
so, James shrunk even more
and was not seen going down
to the pond to ice skate
what happened next
he would never tell & before
long he was the favorite
—mostly because he wore
the clothes of his brother
who never returned from the pond that day
just one day before his birthday
after that
James never felt small again
Christine A. Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature and her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. A series of poems, The Ugly Five, are in the 2018 summer issue of Door Is A Jar Magazine and her poem, The Writer, is in the June, 2018 issue of The Cabinet of Heed Literary Magazine. Three poems, Puff, Sister and Grapes are in the 5th issue of The Mystic Blue Review. Her vignette, Finding God, is in in the December 2018 issue of Riggwelter Press, and her series of vignettes, Small Packages, was named a semifinalist at Gazing Grain Press in August 2018. Her essay, What I Learned from Being Accidentally Celibate for Five Years was recently featured in HuffPost, MSN, Yahoo and Daily Mail UK. Her book of poems, The Cigar Box Poems, is due out in late 2019. https://www.facebook.com/ChrisBrooksauthor/ Twitter: @OMG_its_CBrooks www.christinebrookswriter.com
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The Cabinet of Heed 