MOODS
I have several friends. They like to often visit when I’m alone. Intrusive, yes. The most uninvited guests. They’re flimsy and flighty like stress on my strong body, and they have many times displayed their strength, cried in artistic temperaments, flipped from pity to arrogance, heightened the senses, dressed up like defenses, and darkened the day.
……why do moods always have to be so obnoxious?
(At least they don’t stay.)
TRAUMA
I hid an entire trauma. A very big one.
It sat on my shoulders and pressed my temples. It was shy to life, so it clung to my enjoyment of it, made my world a someday.
I hid an entire trauma away from my family. I took it aside, asked, “Why do you ride? You are not a walk in the park. I could’ve died.” As I asked it the truth, which seemed very convoluted , it tucked itself in, I shook and I screamed. It burrowed exactly into my self esteem, and would not let me hide……..and I can’t hide it after all, I’ve tried.
PAIN
Today only, and tomorrow only, I sit with pain, the holding of it which is lost on me. Pain is pain when I touch another human’s hand. How I long to touch pain that is as deep or as soft as a hand.
FANTASY
Remember, wishful thinking is not a warning. You just return to someplace distant, then to escape to someplace warmer, where the foreigners are different. Your body flies above the realistic, then brings itself back, because when you’re bored you can’t resist it.
GRACE
Only when something is lost.
HUMAN BEAUTY
We are beautiful for the simplest things. The things we are unaware of. Like, the way we look when we’re eating, how our hair falls tussled at the ends at the end of the day, our different ways of meandering things, our faces when we’re sleeping, our immediate reactions to news, our repetitive sayings when we finally do the talking, every um and ah of receiving, when being quiet, yawning…….you may know.
Empathy is Poetry 