April 8: Poem of Sadness

The whirring fan, the listless legs,

the exhaustion that creeps up on you

like a shadow. One never expects to

have to constantly fight, be ready for

battle, fists clenched and jaw tightened;

but that's where you are - every time

you pause, take a breath too deep, a silence

too long, the sadness comes swiftly, diving

in arcs around you, rising up your arms just

like smoke - and all you want to do is leave

and there's nowhere to go.

Time moves in leaps and crawls, fragmented,

and you lose all sense of it before long. Work

piles up and slips off the table, conversations

grow trivial and you start to forget what you're

supposed to do with your hands when you stand.

Fiddle, twitch, bite your finger, twiddle thumbs,

adjust the side of your glasses or wipe your phone.

There's no reason - no reason - and that's what 

really gets you at the end of the day. It's a war

you're fighting, alone in your head, an endless

ocean you're swimming through and each breath

you takes robs your lungs of something important -

and you're getting nowhere, nowhere. People scare

you. They scare me too. Buildings look bigger, the

sky caves in. It's a constant struggle to smile wider

do better work harder run faster read more cry less.

Maybe this is what being an adult is like. I thought

the sadness lasts less when you're older, and along with

knowledge and wisdom and vocabulary, you gain strength.

All I'm gaining is perspective, and that doesn't help, really.

Sadness is fine in small doses - like medicine - as long as

the rest of the time you feel new, like a baby leaf, and know

to watch sunsets and make good choices, as long as five nights

a week you can go to bed with a smile on your face, and as long

as hope outweighs outlasts outlives outshines outscreams despair.

But don't worry just yet.

Don't worry yet. Hope is here, 

just quieter, slower, older and wiser,

less ambitious than despair, less insidious.

When it comes, it'll come with all the force of

a thunderstorm, a falling ocean, a vowel of longing

written into the taut skin of the sky. Keep faith, my friend.