I paint with words for my future self,
wonder what she’ll choose, she
a knight at heart who knows her roots unearthed
by time, brave on a mighty horse.
It’ll be me, afresh one day, at times caught between pages or falling
through loops of time-
pages rustling, covering my cries-
bewitching how time keeps its pace, past or future,
green childhood singing atop of my voice, then
loony old woman singing for one or none-
pages crumbling towards the end.
Today I can still paint with words, the Knight Rode in an L Shape
when a tower knocked over by an army of pawns,
solitary in the corner of a chess table,
was a settlement for someone else’s plans
I’ll learn about later realizing
that writing the Knight Rode in an L Shape
was a lesson on who I am:
writer drawing a syllable map in a book
for a future self to choose from a shelf of endless possibilities,
the way letters follow letters
discover that sentence
of what could have been
if the horse wouldn’t have lost its temper.
Patricia Furstenberg is a Romanian historical fiction, contemporary and children’s books author who resides in South Africa. Patricia penned the Amazon bestseller Joyful Trouble, page-turner Silent Heroes, beloved children’s literature The Cheetah and the Dog, and historcial fiction Dreamland and Transylvania’s History A to Z. Her short stories and poems have appeared in over forty literary magazines including Poetry Potion. She was voted the 2022 Author of the Year on Spillwords Press.