I want to make poetry out of this
I want this to be beautiful,
maybe even romantic, like a quest
I want to be able to make poetry out of
this body that keeps breaking
down
That holds me away from my own
dreams
From limbs that only sometimes work
From strength that fails me again and again and again
From a brain that, at best, is fifty steps
ahead of me
And at worst tells me to kill myself
I want to make poetry out of this
piece-of-shit body
That doctors don’t know what to do
with, that lands me in bed
again and again and again
There is nothing beautiful about this
There is no poetry in bed rest
No romance in the hard work of taking
care of a body
that does not take care of you back
I want to punish it
But I know that will not work
I want to deny and sacrifice till . . .
It does?
Till I deserve better?
But, I’m Jewish
We don’t do human sacrifice
We stopped with the binding of Isaac
I always find myself back at the binding
of Isaac
Raising a blade to my most precious thing
And God sending a messenger to stop
me at just the right moment
The blade never descends
but I don’t know how forgiveness
happens after it’s been raised
I don’t know what my mother would say,
just as we never hear Sarah’s voice in
the story
It isn’t beautiful
I shouldn’t be making poetry
But even when I cannot sleep
and can barely raise my head or walk
across the hall
It’s what I can do
I don’t want to make poetry out of this
this half life
this maybe life
this life on pause
I want the voices of my mothers.
I want forgiveness, beauty,
I want a quest
I want to wake up and know for sure
I’ll be able to move all day
I want something
that poetry should be made of
Something beautiful,
romantic even
Maybe making poetry is what heals
Maybe we gotta make poetry
out of things
that are not beautiful or romantic,
that we don’t know how to forgive,
that we cannot tell our mothers about —
just yet
Maybe the quest is forgiving yourself
Maybe, at the end,
it’ll be worth writing poetry about
I want to make poetry out of this
I want this to be beautiful,
maybe even romantic, like a quest
I want to be able to make poetry out of
this body that keeps breaking
down
That holds me away from my own
dreams
From limbs that only sometimes work
From strength that fails me again and again and again
From a brain that, at best, is fifty steps
ahead of me
And at worst tells me to kill myself
I want to make poetry out of this
piece-of-shit body
That doctors don’t know what to do
with, that lands me in bed
again and again and again
There is nothing beautiful about this
There is no poetry in bed rest
No romance in the hard work of taking
care of a body
that does not take care of you back
I want to punish it
But I know that will not work
I want to deny and sacrifice till . . .
It does?
Till I deserve better?
But, I’m Jewish
We don’t do human sacrifice
We stopped with the binding of Isaac
I always find myself back at the binding
of Isaac
Raising a blade to my most precious thing
And God sending a messenger to stop
me at just the right moment
The blade never descends
but I don’t know how forgiveness
happens after it’s been raised
I don’t know what my mother would say,
just as we never hear Sarah’s voice in
the story
It isn’t beautiful
I shouldn’t be making poetry
But even when I cannot sleep
and can barely raise my head or walk
across the hall
It’s what I can do
I don’t want to make poetry out of this
this half life
this maybe life
this life on pause
I want the voices of my mothers.
I want forgiveness, beauty,
I want a quest
I want to wake up and know for sure
I’ll be able to move all day
I want something
that poetry should be made of
Something beautiful,
romantic even
Maybe making poetry is what heals
Maybe we gotta make poetry
out of things
that are not beautiful or romantic,
that we don’t know how to forgive,
that we cannot tell our mothers about —
just yet
Maybe the quest is forgiving yourself
Maybe, at the end,
it’ll be worth writing poetry about