I fainted this morning.

For a few seconds, the world stopped spinning,

as planets hurricane-whipped
through winter air. Heaviness. Darkness.
Memory skipped a beat, time two beats,
life suddenly shown up, a scratched audio CD.

I opened my eyes, cheek on cement.
Today was the coldest yet.
Each boot thrust through ice
splintered the memory of hills.

At work, I utter this prayer,
Keep me on my two feet today.
I feel frail, wearing the frayed edges of this world
as close as fingernails to my skin.

I come home to Ukraine at war,
Iranian girls wrested from words,
wrestled into prison,
a child stolen by rebels in Congo.

At supper we crack boiled eggs.
The cousin of coral and seashell and chalk
we shatter with one blow of steel.
Just this morning my blood failed

to breathe fluid oxygen to my brain,
How can I find enough compassion
to bathe the world tonight?
Just this morning I cracked ice

on my way to the edges of the world
and eggshells on my way back.
Tonight, I think I can imagine

a brittle darkness, splintering
on the horizon. •

---

Art by Maaike VanderMeer

P.S. I wrote this poem back in 2016 and edited the events in 2022 to publish it then. Even though my poetry style has changed, this poem still strikes me for how relevant it feels every Advent season. (“Advent” is a four-week period of waiting in the Christian faith, a season for grieving the world, being honest about our own limits, lighting candles, and preparing for the celebration of the birth of the “awaited one”.)

I’m sure you could add your own list of what you “come home to” this season; I hope you can sense the night splintering somewhere on the horizon, too.

P.P.S. If you’re new here, I send out a lyric essay every Thursday. These essays hover around the questions of place, displacement, and return. But since we’re in family-and-holiday-season and I don’t have as much time to write, and you don’t have as much time to read, I’ll be sending out poems for the next few weeks. Join the email list if you haven’t already?