(a Journey)
I do not make light of the heaviness
which dwells in my heart. And I think to my chi,
“perhaps if I empty my insides,
it will all fall out too.”
she tells me what I know is truth. That it simply grabs hold
tighter to my blood. That I cannot drain myself more
than I already have.
And so I ran.
I ran past roads I would never choose
and past choice itself.
I ran past my husband, past my wife, and past my three children building a careful fort.
I do not run circles ‘round the moon for
absolutely no reason. But I felt alien
in my own town and future.
Sitting by the septic tanks against the
wide expanse of field and fortune and sky sky sky.
It overwhelmed me.
I had no idea how far I’d gone. I screamed
like I had never done before unless instructed to on stage.
I felt like a symbol sitting between
the reeking pollution of my own mind and the love of God
was trying so hard to show me through
the healing in my running- and just- living.
I listened.
I heard no songs. Only cars and wind and
my own breath, trying so hard to be caught. I found a bridge,
taut as an insect’s wing,
unfolding orange and gold in the evening light
the air was cold like snow.
Then I pulled up my socks and walked back home.
I was wrapped in myself and did not want to go on living
there. Something about the strangeness of
woods and field’s free from company… I feel an eeriness that shivers in
my brain, awakening fears.
Last night I had hand-sewn bits of myself to the core, and yet I
forgot the beauty today,
it left with the steam of my neglected coffee—
its soul lost in the heat of things.
And I did cry a little.
Because I am weak without the sky.
His pelvis and elbows force time across one
deliberated axis. One that I am searching to
find. And this is how the past has become
past.
Yet life is bright in loose time,
and under these formal tall trees, I find it in footsteps; that I am beauty itself,
given and received.
-Claire Small
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