smallness study #1

James Bowden

Remember the night we watched Inside Out?
I was a small bird, scared, shaken. You held me
in your cupped palms and spoke softly to me.
Kissed my forehead. Let me disappear into the
corner of the walls, your twin bed. I didn’t know
how to cry then, but if I had, I would have. I didn’t
know how to love then, but I did. When morning came,
you didn’t know what to do with me and I didn’t
want to leave the peace, your embrace. A flash
of something I couldn’t yet place, didn’t yet understand.
If I could now, I would have stopped running,
right there, in that moment, with you.
From hundreds of miles upstate, I remember
and I am torn to pieces but it is something and I smile.
Past sweetness is suggestion that still
more will come, that I will not live in the cold for ever.
Forgive me, not knowing how to surrender.
I grow tired now and surrender becomes me. By
which I mean to say, I’m ready.

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Sad. Not a great poem but a record of emotions on this here day. In my head are a few things: this line from “Holocene”, and that you played me Lip Parade, which for whatever reason, feels like an equivalent experience. And this song, Phoenix, by Big Red Machine (also a Justin Vernon band TM), which describes how I’m feeling decently.