Friends of Bill W.

[LeftWriteFemme]

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.

*


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.



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