Vitamins

Things got very fast like racing on a speeding train
or super slow motion like a movie reel and deathly
still – all revved up, heart pounding, I’d run around
in small circles or lie very still on the couch and hold
on to the cushions with my fists clenched and watch
the room spin. Three hours alone at age five is a
whopping long time. I’d make up games and sing. No
TV. Too young to read to myself. Mom was a health nut,
so no sugar in the house – only raisins. I’d stand on
the kitchen counter to reach the Fred Flintstone’s –
sweet and chalky – first one, then two, then five.
Time to go visit the nosey old witch upstairs who had
Chips Ahoy! cookies. Our game was one juicy detail
about my mom for sugar. Learning how to lie was easy.

 

 

About the Author

Nicole Farmer is a writer and teacher living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Closed Eye Open, The Amistad, Quillkeepers Press, Capsule Stories, Haunted Waters Press, Sheepshead Review, Roadrunner Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, 86 Logic, Wingless Dreamer, Inlandia Review, In Parentheses, and others. Nicole was awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020. She has just finished her first chapbook entitled ‘Wet Underbelly Wind’ which will be published in November of 2022. Way back in the 90’s she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama. You can find her dancing barefoot in her driveway on the full moon at midnight.