Today's poem is by Elizabeth Clark Wessel

Sticks
       

We woke up to a constitutional crisis.
Couldn't smell it or taste it, never did see it.
We took a breath and it flooded into our cells,
into the tiny clap of electricity between our synapses.
We spent the morning at the playground, avoiding
dog shit with tiny flies buzzing around it, sitting on rocks,
picking up sticks and running as fast as we could.
We didn't know it yet, but those sticks were
a constitutional crisis. We got hungry, we got tired.
Everything pulsated with an energy we couldn't place.
It crashed onto us, crushing what wouldn't be penetrated.
What I mean to say is the world kept ending, and we kept on
loving each other anyway. Isn't that dumb. Isn't that just
the dumbest thing you ever heard.

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Copyright © 2024 Elizabeth Clark Wessel All rights reserved
from None of It Belongs to Me
Game Over Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission