The Great Yearning

Legs twined in sweaty blanket
although it's sweltering
I need it
This knot binds me
So I don't float away
from my home
which has shrunk
to this roomor more exactly,
this bed
This is the only place I feel safe
from the Great Yearning
that wants to escape these 
four blank walls
and have a change in scenery
beyond these streets

Today, eyebrows furrowed
Inquiring the world
through the tap of my fingertips
Until pixels swarm
Waging war on my eyes
Staring at a screen, all day
Again

When I roll over
stricken eyes sighing as I blink
and don't open my eyes
My mind, bored again
Wanders
to how I'll probably need glasses
by the end of this
if there's an end
thinking about the world outside 
this house, this room, this bed
No, not this spiral again
It only destroys
The "OK" I have established
in this home of damp sheets

Eyes shutter open
To dam the incoming thoughts
But my gaze lands on the dying sun
And the rubberband snaps
Tugging on cut-offs
The rest blurs together
Finally jerking to a halt
Sitting in thorny grass 
Greasy hair on display (shh... don't think about that)
On my front lawn
where I collapse
staring up at the emerging moon
half there (good enough!)
in the watercolor sky

closing my stinging eyes
opulescent air
stress released
preparing to surrender
only here can I handle
and let the waves of Yearning
envelop me

amaryllis

CA

YWP Alumni

More by amaryllis

  • Forgotten altars

    You blink and look and stare
    and stare

    As if trying to find the snag in the dream
    the catch in the sweater
    the cards hidden up someone's sleeves

    The meaning of this miracle that tapped you on the elbow
  • You, Tree

    As I sit on this stump and read
    from these pages of your cousin's pulped flesh,
    I burst with the excitement of next year seeing you draped in color,

    You. master of graceful loss.

    You, vessels of wasted breaths,
  • spiraling

    Spiraling odes of love and loss,
    lost pages strewn on the desk and the floor and the eyes and the sky and my limbs,
    each one with a piece of myself I do not want to see anymore.

    what have I created?