ISSUE: Winter 2023
each day you wake wishing that what is, is not, and that’s no way to live.
even the doctors with their glassy words will tell you: trust the dark
coming on early in winter, even if it sounds ominous for your life
in its current state, even if it feels like the very sun being severed. trust night time. but that other lurking—the elephant not just
in the room but every human corner, is suspect.
adore it, they say, like the ancient puzzle it so clearly is. that’s fine
for fables and koans but you are so through with tests of every kind,
even the ones that don’t require a needle to access your port. the world asks so much of you, as though you are its daughter.
even as it yells and yells at you coming up the driveway,
replaying all your errors and nightmares in its hatchet voice,
you keep hoping it still loves you in a way you can’t yet see.
