In Recovery

 

 

In Recovery

 

 

There's a lot I don't know

 

I don't know your name, for instance,

I don't know if you'll become my friend or lover

I don't know if I'd want you

to become one or the other

 

but

 

I do know your eyes are bluer

than the stream we sit beside

that they hold mysteries

I may someday want to solve

 

then

 

like those tiny fish

darting through the water

I'd have to make an effort

I'd have to risk "No" again

 

jeopardy is not my game

 

so I find it easier

to sink where fish and flesh

ignore me and I can hide, safe

to start my swim to shore

 

   

Bernadine Lortis

 

Along with reading, gardening, and dabbling in watercolor, Bernadine (Bernie) has been writing secretly and sporadically for years but began submitting in 2016 when family responsibilities lessened. Since then, fiction, creative nonfiction and over 25 poems have been published in online journals and print anthologies including Ariel Chart, Persimmon Tree, Mused-Bella Online, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Silver Birch Press, Millers Pond, Poetry Super Highway, Cosmo Funnel, Every Writer's Resource, Martin Lake Poetry, Haiku Universe and Lost Sparrow Press. She credits love of and respect for nature to growing up on a farm in S.W. Minnesota on the prairies of the Buffalo Ridge. With degrees in Interior Design, Adult and Elementary Education and Real Estate licensure, after a short time in San Francisco and Iowa she settled in St. Paul, MN, with her husband near their daughter.