More than this

I’m your dark room, your rough stone walls
damp with unease. Here to inhabit you,

not what you wanted, but it’s what you got.
If you argue, you’ve already lost.

I’m what you haven’t been receiving
and you will suffer more for it.

Because if you would only turn your attention to existing,
the confined spaces in your head would widen

and you would find new spaces to inhabit.
Your heart would calm your mind and

you would realize that the blind joys you’re missing
were stopping you from seeing life as it is.

Nothing to rely on in this world except cycles,
day and night, summer and winter.

Here’s your life to be found;
in admiration of change.

I have elicited kindness and creativity.
I have also revealed the cracks in your societies

where the most vulnerable suffer most.
The glass was always broken and there

is your opportunity, because you are a conduit.
Let the information flow through you.

I’m trying to teach you to take the kindness and creativity
and to start mending those cracks.

I am here, but you are going to be okay,
and things will never be quite the same.

Bones come at sundown

White or gray, thin as needles or like the timbers of a shipwreck, bones come at sundown.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

It rises; it dies

It rises, it doesn’t rise, it dies; a wilderness of growth entwined in battle or in love.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

Balance

It tried to grow directly into the teeth of every storm, crouched and twisted, the balance between survival and extinction so delicate.

This post is part of my book-long erasure poetry and collage project on Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.

New Poem @ Blanket Sea

Visit Blanket Sea to read or listen to my new poem “Please Pay at the Reception Desk on Your Way Out”, a poem that describes the experience of trying to get medical support for ME/CFS.

New poem in Rogue Agent journal

The Trip Up is a poem about feeling different because of a chronic illness. When people find out, or when you tell them, reactions are mostly uncomfortable. In one moment you become “an other” and people become unsure around you.

You can read the poem here in the latest issue of Rogue Agent.