1.
Awake at 3:00 AM ruminating
Dried tears scrape my skin as
I brush them from my lashes.
I want to understand the language that wakened me.
I want to understand the poem I am living.
I could write.
Instead, I turn to Ross Gay
contemplate his grandfather’s hands,
his grandfather watering his own grave.
2.
Neuropathy is what they call
the nerve damage caused by chemotherapy.
Neuropathy tingles between my bones
and the pen, numbs my writing.
You could compare it to lightening
though it lacks self-importance.
It seems determined but
disinterested in language
disinterested in tears.
An alarm I cannot silence
it does not speak
but rants its screech
in the hands of its only listener.
3.
This poem I am living has no meaning.
This poem I am living did not arrive bound
in a book, words scattered on pages.
This poem that I am living might better
have been left unstated.
This is the poem I am saying:
There was a little girl
with summer burnished skin
who fell to the ground
from the ancient apple tree
lost her breath,
then got it back
and is breathing yet today.
4.
One cannot revise a lived poem.
Elizabeth Hykes lives and writes in a small town in Southern Missouri. Previous publication credits are few and local.