All you fiction writers out there — yeah, I’m talking to you — yeah, you know what I’m sayin’.

Felony
by Marian Allen

If I blunder into the dark alley
of my past, my experience,
I meet myself there,
a masked thug,
lying in wait
to rob myself
of plain coin.

Honesty is helpless
before the twin fists of
encoding and indirection.
I am a martial artist
at telling what was
as it wasn’t,
shifting value
from one pocket
to another.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about something that affected you very strongly, but set it in another place and have it happen to somebody very different.

MA