I Need a Poem for Tomorrow

I need a poem for tomorrow.
The day my sister and I exchange writing.
Sometimes, overflowing, I cram what I have to share
into the parameters we have set.
But today I have nothing.

Sure, I could dip a ladle back in
to depression soup,
soggy tissues for garnish.
Serve up the same old mess.
But that’s been the menu for months now.

It’s scary. You know. Not knowing
when and if the menu will change.
If I loved myself less
I might try to do more
to change this state of things.
But I’ve already seen through
to the ends of those means.

This isn’t giving up.
Its more like waiting.
And practicing letting
the thoughts that torque the future
and taunt the past dissolve.
Like snow on the tongue.

And so I watch this industrious mind
gather incriminating slush
and other evidence.
Anything it might use to build
if not a monument to failure
then at least some walls for safety.

But I’ve started to stop handing it material
it can use for its doomsday enterprise.
And I have sent it an invite for tea and a chat.
Come, lets sit together. Just you and me.

I am hoping it can settle
for a breathing body
with a loving heart.
And feet that keep taking steps
that land on the earth
and feel it.

Jen Lailey came to writing a little later in life. She works as a GP-psychotherapist in Thunder Bay, Ontario and lives on a boreal-forested property just outside the city. Jen appreciates writing as a way of understanding her own experience and saying what can be difficult to express in the usual day to day conversations.