Oh my darling
What have we become?
Crying and rocking on the front steps
Under a sole star
The pandemic
Is not a joke
Slowly that's been revealed
Even to me, the most stubborn and slow to admit it.
My mind roots around
Like a wild pig
Pulling up weeds of anger, blame
Disquiet
It seems like all around me
Walls are falling
Walls I built to protect myself
To shelter me from
the living flame of my own life
While around me everyone
waves their swords
Hoping forgiveness falls like
Summer rain
on the cracked earth of their yawning wounds
The living flame
Will not be contained
in houses
and all the vices in the world
Won't shield us from it:
This reckoning
Volcano
heartbeat of the world
Waiting at the center
To reveal us to ourselves
Was never mine
Not a car I can drive
This body, these hands.
This spirit who plays me
Plays me soft and wild
Sputtering and then stopping
Turning me like a top.
This woman I am
Resists and rebuilds
Nesting first here, then there
in the shifting safety
and comforts she can find
Ultimately
she sits naked on the steps of her front porch rocking herself
like a child, in the dark morning hours
Hoping for some sense of home
in her own skin