Sequestered in a corner
that keeps folding into other corners,
I lose myself in thoughts
that no longer belong to me.
They have surrendered to the wallpaper
and to the ether, breathing slow
botanical patterns into the dark.
Eyes full of borrowed chance
dance loose from their faces,
drifting like warm incandescent light
from someone else’s dream, half-remembered.
Unforeseen circumstance pools
on the floor like mercury,
splitting my reflection
into a hundred small weathers.
The room has stopped pretending it’s just a room.
Chairs melt back into the hour they were bought.
A clock unscrews itself and hands me its arms,
offering whatever time I dare to wish for.
Somewhere, a version of me
still lingers in the doorway,
deciding whether to step into a night
that hasn’t finished being born.
And the eyes, they keep dancing,
slow static keeps falling, becoming
a particular kind of weather
I had forgotten I was capable of feeling.
~Eric Vance Walton~
(Gif sourced from Giphy.com)
About This Poem: Like many of us I came out of that horrific pandemic-era feeling grief and feeling lost. I kept writing but what I was producing felt like half-hearted attempts to keep my readers interested. I was writing because I felt I had to.
It was as if I had become a fragmentation of who I was before and the goals and dreams I once held had either evaporated or passed me by. It’s taken me the better part of six years to find my footing again and a way to move forward, professionally. With my upcoming book, Walking with the Muse, I feel like I’m back.
A Hundred Small Weathers is a poem about the process of coming back to yourself after a period of grief, indecision, and emotional numbness. The process can be painful and disorienting, but ultimately it contains within it the seeds of reconnection. We simply have to trust time and the process. I hope you've enjoyed this one.
All for now. Thanks so much for reading!
