The Gut | from 6.21.21 edited 12.15.23
I could write about yesterday
I could write about love
about eyes overcoming my gut, pushing up on my heart. Or
I could write about that year when I started feeling again.
They don’t seem to go together
I’m sure they do
pausing this to feel that
turning off the ears
I’ll just watch my skin in the sunshine. Today
my arm and thigh and hand
warmed through the morning windows.
I don’t put my hair up. I allow
heat on my shoulders
like too many blankets
until clouds relieve me.
See—we are connected,
sunshine and skin and clouds and morning.
That’s what I’ll write about.
Dawn in the dew grass,
before I allowed myself to sleep at night __
and only because days wouldn’t hold
enough hours – I surrender.
I’m learned at life in a sleepless trance.
The year I re-learned to feel I didn’t cry.
I let the dew and sunshine and impulses of
a nervous heart carry me to stillness.
I questioned what numbness was. what shock was.
what possibly could tamper down on the blank times
what could close the lid on exhaustion and not be death.
A boldness in my gut lives carrying
this life in and through to more life.
I am still a secret
awake in surrender
watching and feeling and
watching further and closer
for depth in the periphery where
breath pushes up on the heart
low and steady
the motor of the gut.
