It’s at its loudest in the early morning hours. Before light dissolves darkness, before the neighbour leaves for work, before the birds start singing, his laboured breathing comes over the baby monitor whispering, gurgling, rattling, spluttering....

I lie awake listening to the crack of thunder, the roaring waterfall, the sounds of the sea emitted from his chest. A car starting, the exhaust backfiring, the train leaving station. The boat reversing in the harbour. Light rain. A soft meow. His breathing renders a whole world. In this soundscape, I make out the stories he told me when years ago he put me to bed.

Soon, light dispels the apparitions, and his breath comes over the monitor soft, steady, regular, lulling me to sleep.

music of the spheres
how we became
human

—Published previously in Wales Haiku Journal (inaugural issue, Spring 2018); appears here with poet’s permission

Stella Pierides

is a British poet of Greek descent who divides her time between Neusaess, Germany, and London, England. She serves on the Board of Directors of The Haiku Foundation (THF).

Interweaving the past with the present, Stella’s work is located at the meeting points of cultural, social, and psychological worlds, which spark the day-to-day moments of our lives. Her work has been published in numerous print and online journals and anthologies. She has co-edited and contributed to Even Paranoids Have Enemies: New Perspectives on Paranoia and Persecution (Routledge, 1998) and Beyond Madness (JKP, 2002).

Recent books include Feeding the Doves, short stories and haibun (Fruit Dove Press, 2013); and two books, In the Garden of Absence, micro-poetry and haiku (Fruit Dove Press, 2012), and Of This World, haibun (Red Moon Press, 2017), which received Haiku Society of America Merit Awards for books published in 2012 and 2017, respectively.

For more info, visit her website and blog at:
https://stellapierides.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Felting Haiga [or, Hairballs to Haiga: The Evolution of a New Hybrid, “Haikufelting”], craft essay by Stella Pierides in MacQ-1 (MacQueen’s Quinterly, Issue 1, January 2020)

⚡ Four Felting Haiga, aka Haikufeltings, also in MacQ-1

⚡ Noir [A Triptych], haibun story in MacQ-2 (March 2020)

⚡ So that we remember, haibun story in MacQ-3 (May 2020) and winner of the Magician Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

⚡ Time, haibun in Issue 3 of KYSO Flash (Spring 2015); see also the journal’s index for links to additional haibun by this poet.