Lately, I’ve Been Giving Up Too Easily by Karla Daly
I was worried a bird would fly in the open French doors on this green-scented day, but no, a box turtle slipped in. I chased him into the dining room, where he crouched out of reach under the radiator. He darted into my office when I wasn’t looking and hid under shelves sagging with books and bills. While I rummaged for a shoebox to put him in, he ran into the living room and under the sofa, which looked so inviting in the fizz of sunbeams that I sat down and fell asleep. When I awoke, I corralled him at the foot of the stairs, what with him being a turtle. I put him in the box, but he fought me and escaped. [Time passes.] Fine. He can stay. I put a dish of water out for him. Isn’t that what you do? The doorbell rang: the turtle’s mother. Of course I welcomed her in. Of course.
Karla Daly is a mid-life graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Prose-Poem Project, and others, and she was co-winner of The Phillips Collection’s Lupertz Poetry Challenge. She lives in Washington, DC, where she works as an editor.
Photo by Hardik Moradiya