This week’s issue is going to be short and sweet, as I’ve been a ball of wistfulness, nostalgia, longing, and sickness. Whatever is going around hit me hard (most likely in an airplane) and has slowed me down. A lot. The consolation of the past week has come from my extremely generous neighbors who brought me soup, my sweetest friends, and the fact that a red wave wasn’t quite in the forecast. And also that Kate Baer’s new book of poetry, And Yet, came out this week.
Two days ago I lamented to a friend of mine that I felt like I was never going to be able to get all the things done I need and want to get done. She reminded me I was sick. Friends are essential for the bare necessities like this.
I did think about pushing through. For this newsletter, for my day job, for a wonderful weekend trip I had planned long ago. But what’s most in focus for me right now is rest. Big rest. All the answers are in big rest. One answer I came to today (to a question I didn’t even ask) is that this newsletter was always meant to be about poetry. The past few weeks I have wound myself up, slightly stressed about what to write—making what I write mean a whole lot of things it doesn’t. All I ever intended to do was share poetry I’ve already written. The productivity machine is real and it will come for every corner of your joy. Don’t let it.
This week I’m going to share two poems. One of them for everyone to read. One of them for paid subscribers, as promised. Nearly all of the poems I’m publishing come from the past six or so years of my life.
So first, there’s this one. About transcendental love and self love and their strange dance that sometimes eschews them both.
UNBREAKABLE CENTER
It was so small
Just small enough that it could be true
A round unbreakable center of loving you
But nothing around it would stick
The riptides broke down all my eyes did not want to see to begin with
My legs ached as I smiled on, fingers clutched
Around that unbreakable center
Having walked far away from the destruction, I looked back for the first time
And saw a mirage of colors that almost turned me blind
Brilliant yellows and oranges and pinks
All melding into the picture of love we always carried but frequently lost
too obsessed over its dilapidated walls and severely imperfect frames
To look away from such beauty calls a pain to mind
Walking towards the gray, at least there’s still the unbreakable center
At least I don’t have to leave it behind
I'm not leaving it behind