the feeling of the weighted blanket
not leaving as you set it aside
a silent morning alarm
gradually fading after sunrise
you question what there is to look forward to
the tunnel's other side
when you find yourself waking every dawn
beneath the dark, heavy sky

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.

From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
‘O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.’
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare
Hill atmosphere not cease to glow,
And so be added to the moon up there.
The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show
On every tree a bucket with a lid,
And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow.
The sparks made no attempt to be the moon.
They were content to figure in the trees
As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades.
And that was what the boughs were full of soon.

I appear to not have matched pace
with the rest of the world.
Feet thumping like heavy rainfall,
bodies rushing around me
towards something - an end goal,
a vivid, visible finish line up ahead.

I'm shoved towards it
despite my heavy feet
chained down by a weight in my stomach
that lets out a muffled yell,
as if from underwater:
"Stay where you are!"

"I know," I tell the voice, "I know I'm supposed to,"
but it's drowned by the rain.
So I continue to be shoved around,
helpless,
as my stomach grows heavier
as the finish line dawns right before me.

I struggle with what little might I have to not cross the line
just yet.
I'm not ready.

My strength gives out and my left foot pushed forward,
followed by the rest of me.

It doesn't feel as bad as I thought it would,
to be where everyone else is:
past the finish line, into another new track
that would last another few hundred days
to finish.

The swarm of bodies are way ahead of me,
I notice,
and I sigh as I drag my feet
and the chains
and the weight.

Forward, forward,
knowing it was the only direction life granted us.

i have a face cut from ice
a heart pierced in a thousand places
so to remember
always the same voice
the same gestures
and my laughter
heavy
as a wall
between you and me

the ones who are most alive
seem the most still

behind the milky way
a shadow dances

our gaze climbs toward the stars