When despair for the world restrains me,
when it becomes too difficult to feel anything at all
and I cannot move for the way my spinal column coils
the way snakes play dead,
I see my someday daughter like a conscience, like a ghost
Must she inherit all this darkness?

I retreat into the rhythm of my pulse,
Into a single cell’s brave journey from heart to brain
Unburdened by grief or forethought,
Flowing freely.
A heart is a heart,
and a stone is a stone;
I can choose to be soft like an animal, like trust.

I remember there is another world- it is tucked just inside this one.