Three Poems by Mark Hendrickson

Mindful

My therapist says I should light a candle. So I light two, equidistant on the windowsill, four if I count the reflections. It is not enough. I add a stick of incense. She says I should choose calming scents; but lavender and chamomile gag me, so I go with bergamot. I imagine the smoke is steam rising and that life is Earl Grey. The tea grows cold too quickly. Outside my window it’s still raining, also grey. Someone in the apartments across the way is watching me watch them. My therapist says be mindful. I imagine the end of everything.

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People Like That

I don’t like people who are too loud. People that don’t pay attention to their surroundings. Angry people who only see the negative side of everything. I despise it when someone is manic one minute and depressed the next. I don’t care for bald people or those who work out all the time and still don’t lose weight. I have no time for intolerant people. I can’t stand introverts or anyone who can’t manage simple small talk without making it awkward. I don’t like people who take pills just to get through the day. No, I don’t like myself at all.

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The Leaving

Father drops your hand and shames you into leaving childhood. Voluntarily. ‘Big boys don’t carry security blankets.’ This was never true. Innocence was a home you couldn’t wait to run away from. It remains fashionable to claim you miss it. Then came parents. Friends. Lovers. You left them before they left you. You leave all you were willing to die for. You scream regret to the car in the garage. Soon you will circle round to innocence and childhood again. They will drag you from your home and leave you nowhere. Strangers fail to notice when you leave yourself behind.

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Mark Hendrickson is a gay poet and former psychiatric nurse living in the Des Moines area. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work appears in McNeese Review, Vestal Review, Variant Lit, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Follow him @MarkHPoetry or visit markhendricksonpoetry.com