Crashy - Nicole Farmer

was my nickname. I’d fly from my crib as a toddler.

As soon as I could stand, I’d rock for momentum and hurl

myself forward - arms wide. I'd hit the floor and emit piercing

screams, much to my mother's dismay. She put pillows around

the landing zone. Jumping from shopping carts to the cement

floors in supermarkets. Jumping from the top of the stairs.

Anything to feel the joy of flight, the momentary freedom.

Imagine my host’s dismay the other night when dancing

I did a back flip over a chair and landed on my skull.

It was a dare, and I was showing off, but for a moment

I was flying, feet over head. Not exactly the expected

behavior for someone almost sixty. I felt a little bruised

and banged up the next morning, but there is nothing

like soaring through space to make you feel alive.

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Nicole Farmer is a writer and teacher living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Closed Eye Open, The Amistad, Quillkeepers Press, Capsule Stories, Haunted Waters Press, Sheepshead Review, Roadrunner Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, 86 Logic, Wingless Dreamer, Inlandia Review, In Parentheses, and others. Nicole was awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020. She has just finished her first chapbook entitled 'Wet Underbelly Wind' which will be published in November of 2022. Way back in the 90's she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama. You can find her dancing barefoot in her driveway on the full moon at midnight.

website: NicoleFarmerpoetry.com