Iron Pen Poetry Submission

For what it's worth, this was my poetry submission to the Midwest Writing Center's Iron Pen Contest this past month.


Universe

She played with trucks and dolls dressing
them in khaki and in pink interchangeable because
the world was “mine” to define and she the
center of al solar systems, blind, everything
made for her desires and when she grew
older and played with books and
paper-flimsy ideas the universe and
its many suns did not change she moved
around other planets that orbited each
other and in riddles laughed and pictures they spoke that
no one could enter but time and tide as it is said, took
their lives over to
kids and lovers payments they owed to live in
cars and houses the small offices brown and cubed but she
stayed the same her orbit around her own small suns growing smaller
no one else left to riddle and battle the dark holes filling the spaces left
when she was utterly
alone only her paper flimsy books to protect her
from the swirling world opened their pictures and her riddles to
her they were there when all of the other planets had grown distant
and uninhabited to her explorations unable to hear or respond
to her transmissions.

They hung in there, even when she was broke, alone, and sorry.