once upon a time
(when you are swallowed by despair and exhaustion
and stumble into waterflow)
when you can't see because of dark and blurred extrapolations
you will discover, perchance:

when your ability to will
 yourself to stand is overshadowed by despair
when your balance is broken
 down by the keen edge of too many hours alert 
you will lean into the tiled wall of your shower
    maybe you will slide down gently,
    (so-slight friction on so slick a surface)
    pretending that the wet on your face
    is water, just water, tap water
maybe you will not
    maybe you will just stand
    an abject angle
    slowly carefully recovering
because it is enough, a wall,
enough to have learned the simple generosity
the honest-undemanding support
offered by a wall
into which you are able to lean
   no questions or favors asked of you

In the same vein:

I feel whole,
better,
alltogether
    no wandering
    lost last pieces
    of me
        no chasing,
        no taming,
        no trying or timing


right as rain
bright like rainbow
bowl balancing
two feet down on the ground
but head
wrapped up in cool smooth clouds

“This is about my someday daughter, already stung stained with insecurity begging, ‘Mom, will I be pretty?’ I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap listick and answer, ‘No, the word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but, you will never be merely pretty."


Katie Makkai

head tipped back
hands wrapped around rope
falling dreams
and summer things
  sun/shade
  light/leaves
metaphorically-allegorically
and how I want eternity

the things I want to say are crowding hidden in the air
hitting nerves and drawing sounds out
like a tight-tuned tinker's toy piano
and the beauty lost as fumbling past edges you glint on by
and how the joy you feel is never more than the pain
pain as currency, Pain as more alive
living lies in lieu
a debt we pay for happiness
I will not shun the scythe