(i carry it in my heart)

When my book comes out, this chapter in my life will be called, ‘The Wonderless and the Wanderlust’. It seems a little sad that it will come after, ‘Pearls and Curls’, the year in which some of my favorite, bittersweet memories were created. But I imagine in the long haul, ‘The Wonderless and the Wanderlust’ is the growing period. It will be the chapter were readers will get inside my head, which is where I spend most of my summer days: on a beach chair in my back yard contemplating high diving into the clouds. I am only the title character, and have no control over what is going to happen, or maybe that’s what I’m to learn this summer, this chapter, to admit the difficulties, accept the relevance, ultimately and move on.

rabbit-light:

Although you have betrayed him in a dream,
you have betrayed him, and the infidelities
of sleep will change you: you
will find yourself suddenly in love
with the two young women
outside your window
whose voices and laughter fell

groundward

with last winter’s snow. You will begin to think:
I am beginning to move among them.
But only you will be wearing a snap-brimmed
hat. When the knock comes, it will knock

a certain reticence. It will leave
your door covered in white knuckles.

And the windows will no longer breathe, they will die

like paintings. And will no longer be
worrying the stars into meaning, they will
already mean something, but that will only be the wind,
only the wind that will be

keen and keening.

All else will remain hidden and nameless.
By which I mean: your soul. By which I mean

you will begin by missing

your old sadness, that old country: a country
fielded in rye. A strange sore
will just then start to form
underneath your tongue.

You will always find yourself being unfaithful to someone.
You will always be gathering something from the landscape

without poems:

then, finally, winter,
to once again
thin things out, down

to those two women’s
voices. And their laughter, their laughter falling
with the new snow?

Perhaps by then you will no longer be in love.

Your infidelities will have changed you.

Olena Kalytiak Davis

Because she has abandoned me, because my mother tries but can’t really understand, because he is no longer in my life, because my body gave up and took away precious life, because I can’t have lunch with my mentor every day, because fantastic tales and beautiful words are not real companions, because being knocked down is not the end of the world, because I am the protagonist in my story and not a secondary character, because the show must go on, because no one will see me through to the other side, because I am done being looked over by God, because I want a blessing in my life to call my own, because I deserve more than a plain existence, because I am the only person who can change my life, because I want better. Because, because, because…
I will brush off the ice that has covered my shoulders for too long and face the success and failure thus far.