He would never turn the furnace on until November. It seemed such a small thing, barely worth arguing over. After all I had a drawer full of woolen sweaters. So life went on. I made chili without jalapeños, listened to Coltrane instead of Tina Turner, drank Irish whisky not Pinot Noir.

If only I’d stood up for myself. But it wasn’t like that. I simply moved on to the next man.

bindweed—
such an easy metaphor
he scoffs
I nod, too embarrassed
to ask what he means

Harriot West

was born in Boston. She grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and now lives in Eugene, Oregon. She is currently at work on her second book, Shades of Absence, a collection of prose poems. Her first book, Into the Light, a collection of haibun and haiku (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2014) tied for first place in the 2015 Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanterman Book Awards.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Featured Writer: Harriot West in Contemporary Haibun Online (Volume 11, Number 1, April 2015); includes “a brief bit of advice” (86 words, in fact) from West on writing haibun, as well as her haibun, “A Brief Analysis of Contemporary Society As Seen Through My Eyes”

⚡ Until One Day I Said Enough: Harriot West on Haibun, an interview by Jeffrey Woodward in Haibun Today (Volume 9, Number 1, March 2015)

⚡ Harriot West and Minimalist Haibun by Ray Rasmussen in Haibun Today (Volume 8, Number 4, December 2014)