when it takes thirty years to articulate

what I want

because what I want

has never been important to anyone. Not even Not especially Not me

Because I had the idea that taking care of others meant others would take care of me

People don’t give back because you give People give back when you demand, when

you expect no less, when

you don’t give a damn about how they feel, when

you don’t even care enough to try

when the illusion of hope

is about the best you can hope for

we leave because somewhere else is better, sometimes

because anywhere else is better.

we leave because the pain of staying is worse

I tried/try/will try to kill hope,

there is no more vicious emotion to reside in the human heart

than the feeling that good things could quite possibly happen

but this is the wild bermuda grass of the soul

impossible to extirpate

I will not get the job. I am not

what they are looking for.

This is not to say I will not try: When I fall

I will fall forward

my fingers crooked to claws

trying to scrabble my away across the finish line

that always seems to be three inches

beyond my reach.

i am not enough

my brain is broken

and i’ll just have to be okay in fractures

i am so afraid that i am not enough

I have become all that I ever feared:
old, and helpless, and without value in a society that believes in money, but not in Mothers.

Prate and preach about the sanctity of the hearth-fire and the home, and leave me no means to support either:
Snarl that I leech. Complain that I have nobody to blame but myself when there is no cash in coffer. Patronize when I go forth, children raised, into a world that wants thirty years of experience from a twenty-year old, Wants

the fifty-year-old to look twelve, Wants

all the experience in the world except for what you’ve paid decades of your life in learning.

if the tides have taught you your worthlessness

does it matter what beach you find beneath you?

I can’t see that time right now, but I can see that time from here.

Mainly because there is no more hope, and I don’t even have the hope of hope left.

But I still can’t leave. I have to clean my life up as much as I can before I go, because nobody deserves the mess I’d leave if I left right now.

I suppose this means I need to make lists.

And find the motivation that my hope took when it left.

I have a friend who is both hurricane and the calm center of the storm.

She’s the hearth-fire you want to come in and warm your hands with

and the inspiration that makes you want to catch fire, yourself

just knowing her makes it easy to believe you could shine forever, if only

you would reach out with even just one tentative motion

me