Tag: mental health

Walking in the Rain

.Reading time 2 minutes.

On a persistent basis,
it will penetrate
your psychology,
making water come
up from the ground,
down from the sky,
and side to side,
at the same time.

As if shaken,
by an unseen hand,
your eyes will twinkle,
and then fade to coal,
your arms will swing out,
into larger and larger circles,
and then snap, as if twigs.

Hello, snowwoman.
You are hotter
than you are meant to be.

Are you sweating
out a fever
or succumbing
to Spring?

Either way,
take care
to know
you are no more
contained to land.

When a mind becomes
flooded with thoughts
outside the body,
the ground beneath
your feet, themselves,
their wet shoes and socks,
their toes united
in commiseration;
they all fall down.

Once all ice is melted,
and run off to the seas,
take pride
to know
you helped reshape
the continents.

Shorelines
as round as your face,
as square as your elbow,
as it hailed a bus
some million years ago.

Answer “Yes,”
to one or more of the following questions,
and you may be a martyr:

Do you feel overburdened, overwhelmed, and physically exhausted, most of the time?
Do you feel underappreciated for all that you do?
Is your baggage heavier than everyone else?

You may be a martyr
or, otherwise, one
who has had enough
of walking for today,
and needs to collect
her thoughts,
lest she forget
that no one has yet
drowned by sweat
or a walk in the rain.

 

 

Hard Feelings

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

We might call them
easy-to-hang-on feelings
or forms of regret
or crushes
or something else entirely
like how I call them
passing.

From hour to hour,
from day to day,
like clouds,
they manifest
in predictive
patterns and shapes;
but, no duck.

In the sky,
there’s no cover
for lovers,
there’s no milk
for apple pie;
but, perhaps,
enough water

to call them
hard-to-swallow-
but-not-impossible feelings,
or thoughts that run,
or what happens when
one of us says
to the other:

“I’m leaving.”

what is home

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

if not
the shadow
of a round rock
in the desert

where lizards
wade in
mottled shade
as secure in
tribulations

as one fleeing
some storm
imagined
out of the dust
who finds himself

a safe place
to hide
and calls it
home

Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

.Reading time 2 minutes.

I.  On the verge of vertigo, the objects
in the mirror are closer than they appear
to be right-brained would be such
a wonderful thing that mothers always say
is: “Look both ways before crossing
the street” less traveled by will ebb
and flow, but who could miss such a
spectacular show-and-tell needs ears
and eyes are said to be our most expressive
feature films never feature heads
like mine.

II. Carry the weight of your world to my
doorstep. Let it lay upon my shoulders.
Shoulders. Shoulders were built to
shimmy and shake, shake, shake it,
girls were built to touch and taste and
feel better, Love, you’ve got so much left
to prove that force equals mass times
acceleration equals (Vf – Vi)
over time, my shoulders will buckle and break-
ing bread stands for broken bones in
the Bible teaches that we are built to
bear burdens.

III. In fourth grade, I played  as the knee-high
man who stood fallen, unable to get up-
stairs, everyone was laughing, but
I stood frozen, unable to get up
the courage and join them in
Holy Union, by the power invested
in me, and my legs, which buckled at
the “knee me in the groin, I deserve it!”
you spat on my glasses but they were not
dirty dishes made you angry not
mad means crazy – I learned that much in
fourth grade.

IV. Gym teacher says “reach out and touch your toes
—  if you can” throw on a movie and coat
of lipstick, well, you’ll have yourself
a date too mediocre to remember
might make a good little anniversary
one day after my thirteenth birthday,
gym teacher says “you can shoot for the moon,
but you’ll never score a three-point-
one-four was my favorite number in
the universe made me a “Mother,
why don’t you number the stars
anymore?”