analogies

Carry those fragments of my heart

Like a hand of glory

I hate there is a font of poetry forming in me; mother tells me it is like a laborious birth, the creature stuck and struggling, exhausting in all its forms. But it must be done, let out, even if needs must require mess and quiet violence, for to hold it will not do.

I feel so alive right now, and that drags along much guilt. Among the horrors, the rising anoxic tide, the suffocating smoke of where we are, I want to love and be perceived, and it shocks me that I feel myself able to breathe despite the flood, despite the toxic air.

It makes me feel vaguely monstrous, but two decades of suspended animation will do that. I bore those sorrows not my own, gladly, and I would do it again, in every lifetime, for there was where I could say I found a quantum of true joy. To help ease the suffering of others has been the greatest pleasure I have known.

Two decades of that, slowly learning to be me, then helping father reach the ancestors, providing such comfort and solace as he deserved, even though by then he did not know a thing, not even his own name. But that was his entitlement as a human being, and so I honored it with all my breath, and gladly paid the cost that was my leg.

I will spread my love and sorrow to those who are willing to my presence bear, to those who feel their lives would be enriched by me.