I couldn’t stand today,
So I crawled instead,
Pulling by fingernails bent and broken
From peeling at skin pimpled and scarred.
I couldn’t stand today,
So I laid instead,
On my bed I didn’t make
But borrowed, only the blood stains are mine.
I couldn’t stand today,
So I wept instead,
But the pills have laid thick blankets
Over my body
And the tears tremble up
Only from great depths.
a.e.
My spring started December 22
On a plane
Bound for home
Nowhere else to go
But home
Home to home’s original place
Back to where I might find
The space to call me mine
Back to the space where I could find
A beginning to heal
To find what was real
To find what was mine
What was me
What was home
That’s spring for me
The beginning of me
The end of lying to me
Am I putting out leaves?
-a.e
Cats and books and introverts tend to go together
Because cats have a quiet energy
Most of the time
They are docile, sleeping much
Not noisy, padding on soft feet
Their touch mostly gentle
I say mostly
For like introverts
Inside they must be bursting like novas
The energy let out in brief,
Intense explosions at three ams
Or all of the sudden
Skittering away after nothing
How many introverts have felt
The same desire
To suddenly, with no reason
Jump up and run away after nothing
To see ghosts where nothing is
To stare off into the void they see beyond the thin fabric of
Our atmosphere
With eyes wide and staring
-a.e
I am scared to be a wife
I saw a man talking to his wife at the airport
he was sitting very quietly, just watching, seemed quite peaceful,
and suddenly in a flurry of nerves his wife came to talk to him, to tell him something,
nagging and loud
and he barely looked at her or responded, nodding once or twice under the barrage of her voice
and I was sad
and I thought his whole life had led up to that moment
all his experiences colored how he responded to her,
however he saw her,
however he had loved her
or not loved her
and I blamed her
and then I blamed him
and then I blamed myself
for watching.
-a.e
I Want to Write Something So Simply
Mary OliverI want to write something
so simply
about love
or about pain
that even
as you are reading
you feel it
and as you read
you keep feeling it
and though it be my story
it will be common,
though it be singular
it will be known to you
so that by the end
you will think—
no, you will realize—
that it was all the while
yourself arranging the words,
that it was all the time
words that you yourself,
out of your heart
had been saying.
That, friends, is why I write.
A.M. EDMONSON 