In a game of one
It’s nice to think that someday
There’ll be a two
In the game called life
Happy endings are the ones
That are created from
Those moments when
The whole world falls apart
And the only way to contain it all
Is by lying under the wooden slats of a bed frame
And feeling the press
Of those sturdy wooden bars
Dig into your head
Because you can’t contain the outcome
You can’t make it just appear out of thin air
Like a filthy magic trick or sleight of hand
Life just doesn’t work that way
It brings heartaches and sickness
Moments where you cannot get out of bed
Mornings where you lie awake
Questioning the just and quick of reality
And the mysteries that lay within it
Embedding themselves wrapped around a system
Of congruent vines that are almost touching
The pole to which to climb
But it all takes time
Moments where your brain is a tyrant
And your dreams are so realistic
That you dare to put forth and live in this
Minutes to minute frame
Ticking by slow or fast or slow or fast or slow
And those dreams speak of fear and wonder
Of grand libraries and future lovers
Of doubts and claims on meetings
That haven’t even happened yet
That is when you have to reach inside
And pull those doubts out
Like the removal of painful wisdom teeth
Crowding your mind
Crowning at the edges
The white poking through pink gums
When you finally realize
That you can’t control
Everything that occurs
No matter how hard you try
And each boundary gets bigger
As the freedom dares to taunt and swallow you whole
In one big gulp
You are Jonah inside that whale
Searching for an answer
You can’t see through the thick wall of baleen
Because the thickness is murky
You sit stubborn waiting
For a miracle to happen
But that miracle is you
And you realize this now
Typing out a poem at three am
When people start to go to sleep
You have just woken up
To reap the benefits of night
And all its flippant grasp
And pull of darkness
But being Jonah
You know that in the belly of the whale
Is not a dangerous place to be in
In fact it’s quite comfortable
Also humbling by making you sit tight
And think to the maximum capacity
About who you are
And where you are going
In this great speck of universe dust
You call home
So much like Jonah after
He escaped the game and emerged
Stronger than ever
Free of childish notions
A fully formed adult
Or at least a resemblance of one
That stepped into the light
After years of dingy darkness
A lift off out of the cavernous hull
Of bright pink flesh that was once his humble abode
For so long he knew of nothing else
And then like you his hands parted the baleen
Like parting thick coarse hair with a hot comb
Head emerging like a second birth into the open blue