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Posts Tagged ‘particulars’

We could say it took me my whole life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 16, 2025| 4 Comments »



 
 
to grow a heart from lake water and an old
junk yard, from an empty classroom
and cheap novels bought at the second
 
hand store, two-liter bottles of diet coke
and a dusty dead-end road. There was more,
of course. An old plaid couch with a squeaky spring.
 
The spiraling cord of an old telephone. A rusty pan
with cornbread made with Mavis’s fresh eggs.
The breathing weight of my newborn girl.
 
What hasn’t gone into the growing of this heart?
An old red truck. The pinnately compound leaves
of Jacob’s Ladder. But it is the unpetaling
 
that astonishes now, how all the stories
of my becoming—all the particulars
that seemed so essential—begin to drop
 
No, not drop, exactly. It’s just that I nourish
these stories less as I turn my attention
toward the vastness from which all arose—
 
and in this turning, discover how the more
the heart is undone, the more
the heart can grow.

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