Seventh Sunday, Ordinary Time

A playground,

inside of a park,

inside of springtime.

Grass buds press

through the soil like

little follicles of hair pushing

through skin, and I scoop them

up into my hands,

breaking the blades,

smelling all that life,

that green.

.

It's the first day it hasn't been cold,

not even chill. The play set is empty so

I take the swing, listening to its leathery

creaking sigh as I push off from the ground.

Winter depression loosens, slides off my chest

like the last shingle of ice from the roof of

the playhouse, splintering and breaking,

sighing into the mud in defeat, as if it weren’t

once hard as nails, and sharper.

.

My phone sits, blank-faced

like a dead thing at my side.

I came here to think,

I came here to journal.

I came here to see the sunrise and think,

this is the beauty I’m dying from sleeping through.

.

Two physician-prescribed capsules sit

in my stomach, being eaten by acid

the way that fire burns papers, and the

sun rises like a mother playing peek-a-boo

with a child, like a magician showing how

his final trick is done. Dew hangs trembling

in miniature tears on the scuffed metal

of the diamond-linked fence. Beyond it,

someone walks a small white dog across

the distant baseball field. A car alarm goes

off in the parking lot of the apartment

complex across the street and halts almost

immediately. A wooden door bangs against the

clapboard flank of a shed miles away,

carried to me here like the wind’s

flung back the world’s shutters.

.

AMBER alert 6:37 AM: 8yo white female, red shirt, last seen in Enfield Plaza. Suspect 35 yo white male, driving silver Chevrolet, license plate LM68832.

.

The sun spreads

like a runny yolk cracked and sizzling

across the land, the land a pan on which

I stand breathing, an offering.

On my slow walk back to the car,

I imagine I am Adam and Eve both,

leaving Eden.

.

One day, I think, I will excise

the block from inside of me like rolling

back the stone from the grave.

.

One day, I will know the words to say,

and not just write. Instead of carrying

the story I will be the story, and I will

read the world to sleep each night, light

shining from the wounds on my palms.

.

One day, I will catch all the trees

falling soundlessly in the forest alone,

and hold them up with the kindness of my ears.

.

For now, though, I put one foot

in front of the other and think,

in animal anticipation,

of breakfast.