escapril day 23: when the party’s over
My body droops with my eyelids,
My arms and hands so heavy they barely
Lift themselves, I rest
My head on your shoulder
And my stomach feels empty even though
It’s full, and actually,
Everything feels empty.
So I focus my mind on one foot,
Then the other,
Left, right, left, right.
I breathe in, out, in, out,
My exhales sound more like sighs.
Thoughts flow into my mind like
A tap I can’t turn off, but soon
They’ll start to drip, drip, drip
And it drives me insane so I pull
The plug and let them drain and
I am empty.
But it’s a good empty.
A clean-slate empty,
A now-there’s-room-for-new empty,
I’m unafraid-of-overflowing empty.
It’s a relieved-the-party’s-over empty
That will leave me pruned and ready
To return to my roots,
Where I will always go back to trying
To write beautifully about
Un-beautiful things.
I wrap myself in a cocoon of blankets
That pat my hair dry.
Here I go to sleep a caterpillar
And awake, a butterfly.
Lauren Kathleen 