I don’t belong here.
After illness I consider again
what the locals call blessings, grace
unmerited, real as patchwork
and pine, right as rain—
the rag-tag houseplants
hanging on, still somehow green,
the leaky house itself, the one
we almost love but not quite,
its many windows, one another.
I study the lightfall as it plays hide
and seek. Some brief fleeting wisdom
from the world’s soft morning mind
shows itself, then vanishes. I hear it
rustle like any small god settling back
into thicket. For once I don’t chase it.
I don’t bloody my fingers grasping past thorns.
I don’t ask a thin whisper to shout.