She faces backwards from the window of a train, watching the lemony-yellow straw piled up from the summer harvest on the fields.


Yellowed, twine-tied straw
running through well-rehearsed lines,
waiting in silence.


Fleeing southward, as birds do, toward where the sun still shines, in chase of another existence and new dreams, she locks her hands in fists inside her mitts, rebelling against the change of colors in her life. Her decision, hanging on to warmth, has something to do with her heartbreak.


Wind-blown memories
flattened, clunky and useless,
within bales of hay.


Tears anchor themselves inside her eyes in order not to imitate the raindrops that have started slanting against the glass pane. In the gentle dim of autumn, terrified of the ice that would follow, -- ice, outside and inside-- she decided with an adrenaline rush to hit the brakes on a cooled-down love, once and for all.


Drops rigging along
on window panes after stress
as convoys of loss.


She knew she missed again when the communication cords were cut. Now she wonders what she’ll make of the rest of her life. What if the number of her losses outnumbers the places she can escape to? She trembles like a compass needle; yet, sure of her direction, as if she’s going upwards inside a spiral, she feels that hope, her ripened fruit, is waiting for her at the top.


Fantasy cycle
bared trees, scattered leaves color
hope for sights beyond.

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Haibun: Prose plus haiku