Valley Below

Sunday is church day and it's safe to assume everyone sitting in this restaurant is okay with how much we are swearing. Sweet old beautiful voices that have lived in my ears far more years than I ever had to live without them. I remembered, later, how some of those people were responsible for saving my life, and there's no way to explain that to somebody. There's no thank you card big enough for the gratitude. Still, I returned through the mountain pass with a rain cloud on my shoulders, how far away the work at hand, how dry the ink at my fingertips. I laced my sneakers, remembered my breaths; the sun set in a fiery eruption behind the peaks, I pulled a sheet of paper from the envelope, shook with the gratitude that spills over from inside my chest:

knock me down I get the fuck back up again.