The prison and the door

We are all trapped
inside our own mirrors

Alphabet letters for adults

Did you know there is one letter that
no matter what
how many times you recite the alphabet
no one else can teach you
until you learn it yourself?


All my life, I remember hearing "don't slouch"
"don't slouch"
So what else could I do?

Without any of us knowing, I'd studied the grown-ups
and the invisible burdens that sank their shoulders
and rounded their backs with the weight.

I tucked my own shoulders in my chest
tried not to stand out
so they wouldn't notice
and slink onto my shoulders, too

But now, for inspiration standing straight and tall

I contemplate the letter I between my shoulderblades:

I
I can
I will
I want
I hope
I did
I am

And not the letter Y
which is the only letter
others can give you, leaning over
so you must to crouch to fit:

You
You think
You should
You won't
You don't
You aren't

It is not easy to practice one
after becoming so familiar with the other;

to relearn my grown-up alphabet
in a taller body.

But what could they do?
The letter that we all need
is the one we must grow on our own.

The Body

For those who do not constrain
language
to only spoken or recorded words,

the body

in every moment

is a prayer
a poem
a wish

a collection of all the stories over

years
decades
generations

of material experience

wrapped around a heart
that is every now
and has a name
and beats
and hopes to beat
and is
and hopes to be
at least
once
more.

What is my petition?
I am the prayer and the message and the messenger.
And I should listen.

A Chemistry of Emotions: Sadness

Sadness is something soluble

It has a heaviness, a pull, a force, a weight,
a gravity towards that which will dissolve it;

a deep and hollow longing
for home in a greater container, a larger flask, an ocean;
embraced into solution
in the vast and empty bosom of a solvent.

Never to erase it, no.
But, as though the hot and blinding sorrow of a single sun
could, within the dark forgiving rim of sky,
relax into a million tiny stars.

And, what started as a room empty without you
dissolves into
a room
with only
me.