She lives her life as a barnacle would,
clinging tenaciously to existence
in the fast moving currents
of today’s world.
A recluse, without the vanities,
the banalities of every day life,
she escapes it all
living in the far reaches
of the dunes of Cape Cod.
She journals each day.
Pecking words into being
from an old Smith Corona,
sounding every bit like gulls
pecking again and again
at stubborn crustacean shells.
She writes of Victorian love,
placing herself in another world
with a lover of her design.
Her dreams inscribed on paper,
ream after ream after ream.
Like gossamer wings
too ethereal to touch,
to reach in any reality,
but delectable none-the-less.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 24. Today we’re asked to write in the style of Novelist Raymond Chandler who wrote hard-boiled detective novels known for their use of vivid similes. “Channel your inner gumshoe, and write a poem in which you describe something with a hard-boiled simile. Feel free to use just one, or try to go for broke and stuff your poem with similes till it’s . . . as dense as bread baked by a plumber, as round as the eyes of a girl who wants you to think she’s never heard such language, and as easy to miss as a brass band in a cathedral.” Photo from Pixabay.com