Orts #764

God Says Yes To Me    -- by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph 
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

The Couple 

 by Louis Jenkins, from Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005

They no longer sleep quite as well as they did
when they were younger. He lies awake thinking
of things that happened years ago, turning
uncomfortably from time to time, pulling on the 
blankets. She worries about money. First one
and then the other is awake during the night,
in shifts as if keeping watch, though they can't 
see very much in the dark and it's quiet. They
are sentries at some outpost, an abandoned fort
somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains
where only the wind is a regular visitor. Each
stands guard in the wilderness of an imagined
life in which the other sleeps untroubled.