Turns

Another day ends, you are no longer so exhausted that your eyes slip off the pages you try to read. You have finished three books thus far, the first one feels a lifetime ago on a cold morning porch with a cup of coffee although you think, if you try hard enough, it was only yesterday. I write a laundry item list of things I have discovered, as though fearful I will forget them when I drive out of these woods. 

The truth is I’ve only discovered that which I already knew. 

It seems cruel for life to require so much time and money for us to only ever rediscover. Our therapists may disagree. I spend an hour watching the bullfrog disappear and reappear in the sludge. Later, my skin will stretch taut at surprise sunburn. I haven’t looked in a mirror in days. I turn off the scratchy radio just to test out silence. Who am I against a void? What remains when your flawed coping mechanisms are pulled from under you? 

I make another fire. Take another walk. Stare at the way sunlight trickles in through a deciduous forest. The heavy cotton inside my skull begins to subside. I write another poem. 

This one has a line I quite like in it.