Ellen La Penna
Breathe in
through the choke of age
through lungs less elastic
through the web of grief still residing in my chest.
I’ve been trying for so long to put all the pieces
back and make them stay
in place, please.
Then I can follow
a narrow pathway to accomplish
something, anything.
But like this morning’s illusion
the words, the pieces appear to float upwards.
And so I say “no” inside
so often, “no.”
“This before that and if only and
maybe when. . . .”
What I’d like to say,
have the courage to say, is “yes.”
I know you are right here, God, but I can’t feel you
and so I must make a cloak, a wrap for myself
and let others love me, too,
even with the sackcloth of their humanity
with twigs, animal hair and wildness,
missing parts and words.
I failed at safety,
at so many things–
could not protect anyone from death.
A tantrum can be a lifestyle.
Soften,
that was the prayer someone made at the
Christmas Eve service.
May the dominators soften and may I soften
my demand for things to be different,
for me to be different
underneath
in this simple human pain.
Ellen La Penna is a freelance writer and editor whose poetry has appeared in three New Mexico anthologies. She now lives in a tiny cabin in rural Hawaii.