Sometimes the way I see contentment isn’t a vast plain of rolling hills
with no peaks and sweet abandon all there at once.

Sometimes for me it comes in pieces that are sharp around the edges.
I have to hold them a certain way
and then I get to feel the smoothness of the moment
as my thoughtful nerves relax a little.

Sometimes if I have enough of them to fit together
there’s enough room for something to grow.
Like hope, or a fantasy, a mild happiness.
I section each thing off so that it neither reproduces nor withers
returning to them when everything gets cold.

Sometimes I go back to those pieces
and the detached state leaves me confused as to
why it meant so much when I found it. I stumble over them,
they break, I don’t think of them for a while.

Sometimes the new pieces I find would go great with the old
if only I had the right parts of each to make another bed
to grow some emotion out of.

And sometimes, I don’t bother with any of it.
Eventually it hits me, that each piece is fine for a moment
Although, I have not the skill
to make my own vast plain out of broken shards nor the expertise
to know just how sharp/fragile each one is before I grab it.
So they come and go.

But no matter where they are around me
they are impossible to dismiss entirely.