This morning

This morning

I feel stoic and serious

weighted by the wisdom

by the questions large and small of

how one might live one's life, or more

specifically––how might I live mine?

and all the little questions and

worries are like dust motes in the air

because we will die and this is true

and James Baldwin said it was so and it will be

in the same way that he is so beautiful and so wise

and no longer treads in leather soled shoes on the

sidewalks of this earth (I want to tread in leather soled

shoes on the sidewalks of this earth, to have that earthly

heavenly pleasure). 

                                And the thing is, 

life keeps going. Keeps tumbling over itself until the ending, 

and even then who knows? I am beginning to realize this;

phase after phase like beads on a string how many lives a life

can contain and how many I want it to (many, many, many)

even as each one breaks me––and in this way shows itself to be glass:

that which lets the light in and that which draws the deep red beneath our skin.

They say you cannot choose who you love, but what if right now I am not

loving, I am just trying it out. It being anything that I have made fully and completely

with my own two hands. And surely I am doing it wrong, but the secret is

there is no wrong or right. This morning I see this self assurance, a grey stone

in my eyes in the mirror, looking back at myself, hair pulled back tight into a bun,

a Renaissance painting, stoic, and not accepting, but seeing, but heavy,

and clear.