make New Year’s resolutions, March resolutions,
Tuesday afternoon recommitments followed by
Thursday afternoon mishaps, Saturday morning trips
to the sink to run 19 cigarettes under the faucet before
tossing them in the trash. toss them in the trash again
and again and again. every day you are not your father.
every day you are trying and failing and making modest,
happy gains. every day you pull air through dubiously
healthy lungs that, most importantly, work. every day
you fall in love with the world again and every day,
thoughtlessly, you draw closer to peace, knowing
that tomorrow you will forget where you left off until
you stare absently at broken half pint liquor bottles
collecting and refracting dewdrops on the train tracks and
cry because beauty reveals itself in all miserable and forgotten places.
every day you will grow indifference like scar tissue
and pick at it relentlessly to no avail, unable to relieve
yourself of its numbness. you will rage at yourself
because, unknowingly, through a series of days spent
waking up into wonder, you have forgiven the unforgivable
and you do not know how to reverse your mercy.
somehow your love for all that has nothing to do
with him has rendered him so inconsequential. every day
you see the clouds on the high, dubiously clean sky
and the birds circling certain curious dead things
and whisper, breathlessly, thank you, thank you,
thank you, until the hurt falls off of you like snakeskin.
elegies traded for sonnets, tragedies for love songs.
by Connor McMahon