Poem by Holly Ann Kasper
3/22/2022
If I can just breathe
Then I can live
But what grows in my lungs
takes up ruthless space
This fear I didn’t approve
One that snuck past my guards
Which my body now holds captive
Sentences drum softly
With each restricted breath
Internal surgeon, render me ready
I fall into a restless sleep
Willing and waiting
My mind Battles and protects me
Buffered by the mechanics
Of precise calculations
The bars of this prison
Are none but the fog of production
Directed by the maker of meaning
The storyteller
The tug of war Between neurons
Trying to win
Calls me to draw out and within
With so much chatter
I believe I’m protected
But my body plays a different song
With the knots in my facia;
The vehicles of my feelings
Electricity confusing my heartbeat
I’m pulled toward an illusory escape
Such a beautiful creation
Such precision and force
I’m gripped by the insight of inception
The fear and the freedom
The dichotomy fiesta
How can it be…
These same thoughts and ponderings
The same epiphanies
Can happen at different layers
With a sharply polarized unraveling
How can I tell my body
What my brain is digesting now
And how it got me here
When all it wants is to be
My heavenly escape
My great protector
My vessel of life
This brain, oh holy Yin and Yang
Who seeks to tell the truth
Is blanketed with lies
Before the age of knowing
Before the asking is conscious
Before the answers are pondered
And yet, she matters still
Her meaning making, helps to keep making meaning
Over and over and over again…