Catch and Release

I Walk a Little Lighter

 

The nooks and crannies of my little life are bleached with apprehension

Quiet

It’s too quiet

I love to perch on my mantle of silence but I feel that nauseating chill when it gets too quiet

I claim to want peace but I climb to the top of the same oak tree in my sleep

Looking for a great and terrible fire

A thrashing, savage, brilliant fire that snarls with reckless abandon

A fire that asks what it is to have

And what it is to lose

 

An apple-faced monk told me that desire is the root of all suffering

But I want

Lacan said that at the root of desire is lack

But I have

I get what I want and I make sure of it

The more I get what I want the more I fear its escape

 

At 18 I begged a python to swallow me whole but he wasn’t hungry

At 19 I ate only cotton balls for breakfast and I was

At 20 I summoned 7 ghosts to haunt me hoping one would be my father

At 21 I only spoke to my father in short sentences

At 22 I went to school to be a therapist and realized that I probably need a different one

At 23 I read 16 self-help books and put them beneath that oak tree

Hoping the fire would know what to do with them

 

Sometimes it all seems an elaborate game of catch and release

But last night I did not dream of that raging fire

Or those 7 ghosts or even of my father

Or that rippling river that will take me to the land free of longing

I dreamt of nothing

I woke to the sweetness of my own little life