Poetry, Short Stories, Gibberish, and Other Insane Ramblings of a Dysfunctional Woman

By Debra Ann Romano

A glimpse into the personal, once dark tumultuous world of a woman who, enroute to uncovering her stagnated identity, offed the characters her pen created instead of becoming a serial killer herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Aug 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483435855

Book preview

empowerment.

8:55 2003

There was a clock there a moment ago; right there on that wall, high above that counter. It was round and white with black hands. It read 8:55 and I know not what the significance is. I know only that it is no longer there, mere seconds after viewing it. My child insists rudely and impatiently that it was the digital screen of a cellular phone that I saw, but I know that mine is turned off, and that those screens are green, with digital looking numbers anyway. No, this was a clock, and I am sure I glanced at it for a reason.

Something is calling me, longing for me and I glimpse it sideways, every now and then. Sometimes it brings me to tears, heaving uncontrollable sobs, always unidentifiable. Sometimes it shimmers, like a reflection upon water from an unknown source and piques my curiosity at its mystery. Sometimes it is a movement, a shaking in the wind rocking my standing car, or a cool breeze in my closed house. Sometimes it is a clock on the wall that disappears.

Occasionally when I am driving on those balmy spring nights, the ones too cool for your windows to be open but warm enough engage the air vents, but not the fan, I can smell it. It is a scent that is taunting. I cannot quite find it but I know it. I see the clock on the radio, playing low but sending a loud message nonetheless, and it is 8:55 and the cycle begins again. If there are answers waiting to be discovered I have not determined where to locate them, nor their questions. I have looked for them in patterns left by rain upon the windows, and in the faint voice beneath fading radio stations. Perhaps they exist only in my anticipation of them. Perhaps I shall find them at 8:55.

8:55 may not be a time at all. It may be an old address, or one that has not yet been constructed. It may be a dimension, a measurement of unseen proportions existing between this world and the next, or the one before. I am sure only that it is important and that I must watch for it. Funny, the homophonic meaning of the word watch and odd that I would use it now while relating my dilemma. For, does not a watch imply a timepiece as well? See, even you have witnessed how this thing runs always perpendicular to whatever I’m doing, crossing over just enough to inspire interest or perhaps it inspires fear. Fear that 8:55 is my own time. Time to complete the slight gap; time to move forward towards the place where all the clocks that aren’t there tick-tock and chime in inconsistent rhythms but not quite