Slowed way down
Agreed to stop standing in bathrooms
Running toward parked cars
Happy to sit
Happy to work
Happy to take a backseat
What am I learning?
Material
Turns out I’m not dropping my gifts
Just disappointing the large audience
Or learning not to
Not willing to be parted from my babies
They deserve at least that
In this world of busyness
Work
All the disdainful distractions from what matters
Why bother breathing if you can’t share all the love in your heart?
No more laboring to feed the rich
My soul cries for more

A dark and wintry melody
Sung alone with a guitar
Cracked my heart open tonight
Remembering
The shimmering of fresh snow
From golden street lamps between shadows
Underneath a black empty sky
I am small, sprinting barefoot across campus
Holding my stilettos
Drunk and foolish
Running with a new friend I’ll never see again
to catch a midnight movie in time
How vast the night skies, all of them
How fruitless her hills, I went hungry sometimes
The nagging feeling there was going to be nothing here for me.
I cannot stay.

How far away from that time I feel now.
Novels have been written.
I cry for the trials I would face.
How much life would change me
Remembering the hunger that looked like drive
To those near enough to witness.
Many have traveled much farther
Also alone
Crossing dark oceans with hope in their heart.
How strange and beautiful is this life?
How grateful am I to finally have a companion.
But tonight I feel her loneliness
I feel her emptiness, her placelessness
I feel the cold snow stinging and numbing my feet
And the alcohol warming my heart
For the long and difficult road ahead.

Hunkering down

The winds are whipping around tonight

Like mad little goblins

Just when I’m maximum spooked

The enormous, graceful koi fish

Makes an appearance again

It’s my sign to:

Wait

Wait

Wait

Earlier,

A capitalist’s wet dream

Flooded American living rooms

Not a dry eye anywhere

But it seemed a little too perfect to me

Wait, wait, wait

Am I being seduced?

To what am I faithful?

Do you all need seduction?

And what if I refuse?

Can you imagine

How much suffering evolution required?

The gasping of gills choking on light air

The pain of rocks against

Soft foot flesh

The stretching of lungs too tight for thin mountain air

The number of children you had to watch die

Helplessly

What pain was endured to arrive at this

Halcyon moment of comfort and balance

And we take it all for granted

Until we can’t breathe freely again.