I watch the same dance over and over
online with the music muted,
noting the exaggerated expressions,
dramatic flourishes, and lithe dancers
moving like panthers together
while I sit like a puffed pastry
with only a wisp of muscle memory
from when I danced.
I can still move and be salacious,
but there seems little call for it nowadays,
as the woman in the mirror is
fully grey and swollen,
more a cushion than a catalyst.
There is still a need to move though.

What a grey day!
If I were a painter,
I could convey the drear
in heaps of paint
(I am too heavy for watercolors
at this point in my life)
but I like to watch
so that makes me a watcher
and I write poems
so that makes me a watcher who writes,
so in too many words,
I can describe the layers of wet and grey
to convey the warm winter’s day
with maybe some of the sadness
but not the ever-bubbling sense of hope
that keeps pushing through
because I am a watcher who writes who
also looks for color
because color is linked to hope
and I am a watcher who writes and hopes
who is maybe in love and a little foolish too.

Color is secondary to light
Choices are intermittent and arbitrary
Quiet is a luxury
Everyone is sad
Flowers are extraneous
Flying a kite is mandatory
A shield of propriety is nice
I’ll never make it
Reading is a good way to disappear
Shoes should be comfortable
Gravy should be assumed
Intellect supersedes kindness
Nonsense can fit in a box
We are interplanetary missiles
It’s ok to climb a roof to see the stars better
Rules are optional

The sky refused
to cooperate,
holding onto
a stone-grey palette.

Any quest for joy
was waylaid
by an icy response.

The swans didn’t say much
but their slow gaze and feather ruffling
made me take a deeper breath
which meant the difference between days,
between spaces, pockets of time
that can be found in a few hours of rest
or with a reshuffling of chemicals
or cracking open an aching heart
to let in a little light, a little love
and in this case, letting some birds tell me
what’s what and where I belong.