Arguing With a Comma
The last thing I remember was arguing with a comma like it owed me money.
The desk lamp burned its small, inquisitive sun over a crime scene of drafts—pages crossed out like bad excuses,metaphors limping away from the scene with their hats in their hands.
Being a writer is mostly moving furniture inside a sentenceuntil the couch of meaning stops blocking the only window.
I have compared love to weather, grief to an unreturned library book,hope to a stray dog who chooses you—and still the page blinks back, white as a dentist’s grin.
Sometimes a poem arrives like a gentleman caller, hat tipped, bearing figs and thunder.More often it’s a raccoon in the attic, scratching at 3 a.m., demanding to be named.
I chase lines the way children chase kites—convinced the string leads somewhere holy.I have mistaken ego for inspiration, confused applause with oxygen,believed a clever stanza could sandbag a flood.
But the truth of it is quieter.Writing is excavation with a teaspoon.It is lowering a bucket into the well of your own ribsand hauling up whatever water agrees to rise.
Some days I strike flint—a spark, a sentence that stands upright like it has knees.Other days I sweep the workshop of language,finding only splinters and a stubborn nail of doubt.
Still, I return.I sit before the blank field.I bury my hands in its snow.I wait for the fox of an image to step lightly across it.
The last thing I remember was arguing with a comma like it owed me money.
The first thing I remember is being under something.
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Shared with those Poetics over at DVerse Poets Pub.

This poem ends with the first line of a semi-autobiographical novel by Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
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©2026 Christopher Reilley 
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