Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Eyes barely open, and it doesn’t even occur to me
that anything is wrong in the world. After all,
I am warm and no one is crying. There are no
gunshots, no bombshells, no one kicking at the door.
No one shouts, no one threatens, no one steals.
I’ve yet to read the headlines, yet to remember
yesterday. For a moment, there’s no hitch in my breath,
no stab in the heart. It’s only the beginnings
of a very blue sky and the sound of the dawn chorus
in the nearby tree, though the more I listen,
the more their song sounds like “Me, too. Me, too.”
And somehow, at least for a moment before I rise
to wash my face, before I look in the mirror,
I still believe everything is going to be okay.
And sometimes, despite everything I hear,
despite feeling it fall away, the feeling stays.