a failed exercise in stoicism.

her mind is a blur,
possibly because her hands
are unsteady, with their slight
shaking, and
her eyes don’t focus as well as they should
in the early morning.

she repeats the same sayings,
the same jokes, like mantras, so as to
give her body the rhythm it so
dreadfully lacks

she dresses
and faithfully turns down the sleeves
of her blouse
piecing herself together by
breaking herself apart –
is believing in something so
darkly insignificant a crime?

the promises she makes are hard
and shiny like tumbled stones
yet their jagged qualities can’t be
tumbled away.
they remain brittle.

she practices printing, then
script in fine red ink,
trailing her y’s and making the
sharpest of v’s
mostly she wishes her facial features were
phonetic
so she could pronounce her emotions
instead of puncturing them.

she is a weaver, and with orchid-scented
palms she hooks and threads and
nimbly orchestrates the digits at the end
of her weakening arms.
these tapestries of elaborate
hope are nothing more than gossamer,
light and fleeting,
and she uses them in defense, allowing
them to settle over those who would rescue her
to comfort, and cover, and fool.

there are lies, which she
harmoniously practices at the jewelry
counter, or the river, or on those she loves.
for when she tells the truth,
it tastes like plastic.

and comfort is better than worry and truth;
they may have grown, but she can
still shield them
from the harsher aspects
of the world –
how no one ever really “gets
better”
and we’re all just survivors
of our own personalities

she’ll continue surviving
unless she doesn’t
but the more they try to silence her ramblings
and still her unrelenting hands
the less they’ll remember of how
they thought they solved her
in the first place.