endure

In an anguish I cannot pace

Where I know I’m not alone

But I feel so utterly isolated

And I keep lifting my head

And I keep pushing through

And I’m wondering why,

As if there is any reason to persist

Each year more anguish than the previous

Each love more draining

Each fight more savage

Where is your god now?

In the thick of it—

Dissecting us like experiments

I need to heal,

from the claws of our species

in words and language that abrades

strife, like little rocks in an open wound

in blood and salt.

I’ve trained bigger horses

Demonstrated greater power

And in this moment, restraint.

it’s thunder breaking in the distance

it’s having my brain devoured by ants.

Today it’s the electrical torpor

 of a limb falling asleep

in the numbness of pushing through chapparal

regardless of how much damage our forms endure

we will endure.