How to Starve Your Demons, or Why I Stopped Looking at Social Media After the 2016 Election (Day 286)

How to Starve Your Demons, or 

Why I Stopped Looking at 

Social Media After the 2016 Election

When I look at you,

peacefulness recedes.

The turquoise seas dry,

revealing their soft

underbellies, which

harden and crackle, 

a vast desert of 

shattered tempered glass. 

When I look at you,

fragile as I’ve grown,

something in my heart

stirs—awakening

a sense of dread—that

lives apart from me,

a burning creature

eternal and dark,

who crept in and stayed

after he arrived.

So I endeavor

to starve my demon

by never looking,

even askance, at 

you, summoning, and

ever beckoning

concealed in your blue 

like a false hero.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's 
"Descent into the Maelstrom" 

by Harry Clarke (1889–1931), 

published in 1919 (via Wikimedia)

When the Magic Ends (Day 282)

When the magic 

ends

and the music 

winds down, find 

the one who’s still 

around,

helping you sweep up 

the fairy dust

and 

carrying dishes

to the sink. 

Choose him. 

You may not think 

so now, but he 

is the answer 

to those prayers 

and wishes—

the one 

who stays

after the party,

instead of leaving 

you

to clean up 

the mess

while he follows 

the rest of the crowd.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Wonderlane via Flickr

Moderate Cruelty (Day 280)

Tepid, aglow with the cuprous 

sweat of self-loathing, you 

resort to moderate cruelty 

again and again

that was always your way

of containing the steady trickle

of commentary—expert at everything

you do—that accrues 

in the pit of your stomach

day by day and no matter where

you look you are insensate 

to the shards of beauty 

that slice and snag your skin

with every blundering step you take

unable to understand that there 

are miles of possibility

at your feet

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: White House dot gov

Shortcomings (Day 266)

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Grandmotherly Advice #1 (Day 202)

The way to his heart, 

Cartographically speaking,

Is south by south-east.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Justin Tietsworth