Grasshoppers live such musical lives,
Their fiddles weaving into dusk.
Bullfrogs beat their hollow drums,
Wind whistles wide across the plains,
And leaves lend voices from the trees.

I rest inside their lullaby,
Envisioning an idyllic band.

Is never sufficient,
Always lacking
In its allocation.

Thoughts demand
Extension.
Lives ache
For replenishment.

But time
Is Scrooge-like—
Clutching its wealth,
Refusing
Generosity.

Over and under
I bob through waves,
praying for still waters.

The rot in my bones
hasn’t sunk me yet—
yet I’m wayfinding,
losing sight
and finding it again.

Catching the silver of the sea
in sunlight’s reflection,
I feel the breath of whales
as they breach
and exhale.

I drift among cephalopods,
and in between the spines of sea urchins—
each one urging me
so swiftly
back ashore.

And I wonder
if we,
humans,
are a tragic
flaw in nature.

I did the scary thing—
the thing I swore I couldn’t do.
The memories,
locked in my skull,
screamed ****** threats,
seared my skin
each time they dared
to be remembered,
spoken,
or written down.

But now—
now, now—
I did the scary thing.

I laid on paper
the story that hollowed me,
that clawed from the inside out,
scratching and screaming
at the walls of my mind,
pressing a knife to my skull each day,
reminding me of things
I wished were never true.

I did the scary thing—
the thing I could never do before.
I told my story to paper,
to the silent, waiting
record keeper.