Double Negatives

by John RC Potter

You say:     there is not a heart in existence

                   that cannot be broken.

I ask:           who can tell if a bear is asleep

                   before it has woken?

In spite of myself,

I laugh at your use of double negatives.

Then you say,

without looking at me,

they must certainly reveal such a very witty mind.

But I think,

looking at you,

they reveal just how many truths you have left behind.

John RC Potter is an international educator and gay man from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems and stories have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces (“In Search of Alice Munro,” June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved,” June 2023) & Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author,” July 2023). It was recently announced that "She Got What She Deserved" has been recognised as one of the Top 100 Projects in the 7^th Annual Launch Pad Prose Competition. 

John RC Potter – Author Website (author-blog.org)