the hardest surgery is the one you perform on yourself.
Steady?
Ready?
No anesthesia but a chuckle of nervous humor
the first incision across your heart.


When you finish (many months later)
you put the scalpel down, wave weakly
to the clapping colleagues hugging each other in disbelief
from the observatory, sterile and eager
you give them a wan grin
and hope they've watched closely
so that now they know how...
how to do this.

At twenty-something, I was taught by Fear
who said nothing matters
and then at twenty-something-else I was taught by Faith
who said anything matters
And she wasn't the Sunday kind of Faith that you find
clasped between your palms, clasped like you're afraid
that if you let go the Faith will just tumble out and break.
No, she was the Faith that was bigger than God and so intimate
that sometimes I was the Faith, sometimes you were the Faith,
and sometimes the Faith was me.
So really, Faith doesn't have a name.
But Faith and Fear, they both breathe, they're each lung
and when I fill one, the other billows, after all
you need two to breathe.

And so then I, feeling bold, learned about Bravery.
I had heard about it in newspapers and history book indexes
and in our local volunteer firefighters.
Wondered if I could buy it.
Wondered how much it goes for.
But I couldn't find Brave until the moment I gave up on it
and said, ***** it, I'm so scared but I don't care anymore,
I'll just do it, Brave be ******.  
And surely enough, it was hiding beneath the tremors.
So really, Brave was the Siamese twin of I'll Just Do It.
which, by the way, wasn't in the glossary of this or any history book.

Everything changes, you know?
I'm changing, you're changing.
Oh, it storms me like the sea!
I secretly raise my glass to stasis, my faraway frenemy.
Don't tell the other Sagittarians, they'd exile me surely.
Change, letting go of my old faces
feels too close to dying,
feels too close to leaving you behind.

And I'm not ready to leave you behind.

Oh the West, keep your Mountains.
If only for a little longer.

I've excised my soul again and again
transplanted and sutured
but there's just no time.

Even with these visions from under the knife-
there's just no time to heal
before I'm laid on the table again.

Faith hold me-
Fear teach me
so I can...

Steady.

Please- stay with me.

*Ready?