Trying to hold it all

I will scream and cry and throw a plant pot at the wall once a year, but I won’t go to war with life.

I will continue to be daunted/haunted by rejection and failure and violence and sickness, but I won’t try to hack away at what I don’t like, convinced I can banish it to the underworld—because I know what that leads to.

I will not delude myself into thinking I am one thing or two things or 65 things moving toward One Big Thing, and I won’t dream of a road trip that fixes my thinking.

I will do everything in my power not to cast others in plays written in my sleep, and however I can, I will refuse to flatten people and experiences and IT ALL into something that can be contained. I will try to appreciate all the shapes.

I know I will still seethe with separateness and lose myself in over-baked stories—some of them told by me—but I won’t stay there. I am eager to honor every breeze and every twisted tree and I can see how close the edge is, and how quickly it’ll be time to step off.