adrienne rich

after adrienne rich:

Before leaving, we perched together on the balcony rail,
wondering if the sun would set the same, tomorrow.
I packed everything
I could think of, but still I wanted
to claw the carpet like an angry cat, did not
want to leave. The camera(s) were
loaded, guns waiting to fire on
a scene. I could only imagine an
unbearable winter cold and staring
downwards in order to hide my face from
the bitter chill winds, the
dirty concrete treaded over and over, with the
tracks of over a million.
There is a way out.
It is always there, but when shall
I grasp it? The fear of the battle
leads to drawn out failure and
inevitable disaster. And so we go.

We fly.
Mile by mile, thousands by the second
and I still feel like I'm going to explode
from being closed in. The air tastes
stale and burns the insides of my nostrils,
sterile. I want fresh earth.
We fly. I'm about
to throw up. I can't breathe and
my legs are restless with the energy
of days spent motionless, trapped.

What is life? Some days, it feels like
the undulating pull and push of the
tides. Deceptively
the same, day in and day out.
Now, almost
carried away by the undertow,
I must fight for breath,
and refuse
to let the ocean take me where it will.
I have started to see that
that the sand beneath my toes
changes every time the
water recedes.