July Web Feature by Emily Eddins
Emily Eddins is a multi-genre author of poems, short stories and essays. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction have appeared in more than twenty publications including the Willow Review, The Louisville Review, The Round, Toad Suck Review, Forge, Front Porch, The Cape Rock, and others. Her humorous essay collection, Altitude Adjustment, reached the Top Five in the Amazon Kindle Hot New Releases section for 90-minute short biographies. She holds a BA from Vanderbilt University and an MA from Georgetown University, and lives in Northern California with her family.
Meditation on Teenagers by Emily Eddins
If I could hold onto the peace of five a.m.
The quiet hum of the refrigerator
The songbirds softly whistling
As if happiness is their natural state
If I could hold onto the butter yellow clouds
Illuminated by the prospect of today
Or the slight breeze wiggling the aspen leaves
As if to say, “Good Morning, life”
Then when you launch yourself at me
with words hotter than the mid-day sun
Instead of stoking the red coal of my resentment
I would feel it melt away
Like the calming touch of mist on morning
Like the chickadee’s last note
Our words would fly up and disappear
Into a blameless turquoise sky
El Portal Literary Journal 