catastrophe.
When days shrink to surviving and little else.
Congratulations due for getting through.
The simplicity was an odd, unexpected comfort.
Whereas now,
in some quiet in between or after,
the questions announce themselves again.
Regrets and wondering at purpose.
Looking in the mirror for the first time, maybe, in years.
Wasn't it somehow easier, then?
In surprising ways?
In 2020 when I saw no one and sang the Cranberries
Empty
in a hot shower twice a day.
Took two hour walks to get to a mailbox and
swept up rollypollies,
heaps of them dead at the door,
every morning.
I didn't feel old or complacent and
it wasn't a question of having settled
or having lost my spark
or much of anything related to a self at all.
I was nervous about the world,
alive in it,
and little else.
oh, to be
