Thursday, November 7, 2013

unsurety

I know I overthink it, I overthink it all, I tell someone last night on the phone outside the coffeeshop down the street where I'm writing a paper and drinking green tea to stave off a cold. I didn't go to work yesterday, woke up too exhausted and feeling terribly for no real discernible reason, just bleh, and thinking too much about how wrong I probably am.


1 comment:

  1. "Courage," by Anne Sexton, from The Awful Rowing Toward God
    It is in the small things we see it.
    The child’s first step,
    as awesome as an earthquake.
    The first time you rode a bike,
    wallowing up the sidewalk.
    The first spanking when your heart
    went on a journey all alone.
    When they called you crybaby
    or poor or fatty or crazy
    and made you into an alien,
    you drank their acid
    and concealed it.

    Later,
    if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
    you did not do it with a banner,
    you did it with only a hat to
    cover your heart.
    You did not fondle the weakness inside you
    though it was there.
    Your courage was a small coal
    that you kept swallowing.
    If your buddy saved you
    and died himself in so doing,
    then his courage was not courage,
    it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

    Later,
    if you have endured a great despair,
    then you did it alone,
    getting a transfusion from the fire,
    picking the scabs off our heart,
    then wringing it out like a sock.
    Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
    you gave it a back rub
    and then you covered it with a blanket
    and after it had slept a while
    it woke to the wings of the roses
    and was transformed.

    Later,
    when you face old age and its natural conclusion
    your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
    each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
    those you love will live in a fever of love,
    and you’ll bargain with the calendar
    and at the last moment
    when death opens the back door
    you’ll put on your carpet slippers
    and stride out.

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