At All

For a few short minutes, the silence was absolute. Every nerve ending from my skin sank into the core of my being, drifted along a South Pacific stream and watched with curious gaze how the pieces of my life wrapped and unraveled before me, painted themselves in new lights. I returned to earth with all the same pieces but they looked different, now, and they tattooed answers along their flanks that I had never seen before.

The city looks different today, gray and cold, the bitter winds seep in through a window that cannot be closed. But there's sunshine in my belly now, there's a tiny flame of hope that holds on even through your rainy days, I will cling to it like my life depended on it, I will bury myself in words and wrap them around me like life jackets for however long it takes. I know the world loves a hero's journey, but maybe it's enough just to survive and come out a little better than you were before.

There was a dead mouse on the kitchen floor this morning. You know there's a meaning, a metaphor, a beautiful lesson to glean from it. You know the mouse deserved to return to the earth and become flowers with the spring. It hangs instead in double bags on your door knob so you don't forget to take it to the bins.

That lesson you'd rather not see.