June 27
RECLAMATION ARTIST
I stand over the refuse can and peer in; I drive slowly past the piles of curbside discards. I have so much trouble accepting there is no reclaiming most of this ever-growing mass. There must be an alternate plan but I can’t see it yet. I surround myself with hopeful stacks and wishful trinkets. I want to make a new world from the old, save past relationships and make them somehow fresh. I don’t want to drown. I fear I can’t think fast enough to keep the wave from breaking over us all. I will maintain an open mind and be grateful my life was retrieved from the dustbin. I’ll steal peeks at what has been put out for lost. I was once lost, too.
Read your favorite book one page a day.
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When I rise up and when I lay down
In order to be happy with you
I have to learn to be happy without you.
I gasp at the pain of it
I desperately wish that the above statement were not true,
but alas, you are gone in a way that I can never reclaim you
and to hold on to what of you is still tentatively available
I must release my frightened grasp.
A wisp of smoke is not the bonfire of our past,
but it is what remains and I breathe it in as best I can.
Immediately I realize I am holding on again.
I breathe you out, let you go.
I want to run screaming throwing you from my bonds,
yet another of my attempts at control.
So, now it’s time to pray.
Not a prayer to get my way, not a prayer to make you stay,
not a prayer to make you gone, just a prayer to live on my own.
God help me please to live my life,
Please guide me away from strife.
I am lost and cannot find my way,
Father, hold me till the light of day.
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