when I’d decided to furnish
a room with marigold walls,
a time when I caught the daily catamaran
and hunkered starboard side
to read arctic adventures.
It was a good time.
It was a moment, really,
not expansive as it was happening
but now fills me with slow
maple syrup sappy sticky thinking.
It was better than that other time
when feelings weren’t aptly named
and a Hawaiian nurse just for me,
recalled her own horrible time
to help me feel unloneliness
or, maybe, holiness—
me in a circle of a few
similar souls.
When I’m back in that other time
some clonging bells still roll roll
side to side like little neckweak
infant heads.
I’ve tried to make that time
not bother me.
No more, though. No more,
will I not recall
the jarring note’s peak
the good times
the gone.

Katy E. Ellis grew up in Renton, Washington, and is the author of two chapbooks, Urban Animal Expeditions and Gravity (a single poem), which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Her poetry appears in a number of literary journals including Stirring, Literary Mama, MAYDAY Magazine, Calyx, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the Canadian journals PRISM International, Grain and Fiddlehead. Her fiction has appeared in Burnside Review and won Third Place in the Glimmer Train super-short fiction contest.  Katy co-curates WordsWest Literary series (www.WordsWestLiterary.com ), a monthly literary event in West Seattle, where she lives in with her husband and daughter. Read more at: www.KatyEEllis.com