Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

November 10

I DON’T SEE HOW


This is the smallest of the fragile excuses I use to keep from doing things to make me happy. Petty in a way I would never be with others, I rake my desires and tiny little hopes over the coals. Tired platitudes are plated up as first serves by my short order shortsightedness. Protecting crusted-over nonsense, I live the life of a lockout, not even a squatter on the fringes of my dreams. I stumble in my efforts to see hope, joy or my purpose, ignoring the fact that I must step from the box before I can see the horizon or more.



Rub your own head.
*

Olive Juice


For whatever the reason olives are often pitted
and once they are pit-less
there seems to rise an irresistible urge to fill that wound,
whether with pimento or children’s chubby little fingers
as they fish them from the can.

There is an opening, an answer must be found.
When I find my center gone
I have that same yearning, fill that hole!
It is an imperative,
a need that must be met no matter how poorly.

I will stuff just about anything in that gap;
the list is longer than the Bell directory
and yet none of it is an adequate replacement
for what has gone amiss.

So here I stand rife with questions.
What to put in there, what to keep out.
Is cream cheese preferred to cobwebs?
Prosciutto better than ice?

Nothing is better than some things
and the right thing is better than having given up.


You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault