Secular

(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