Sometimes I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how to describe what I’m doing, the company I’m in. My surroundings don’t want to be encased in language. Roots exist, growth occurs; this isn’t passive living. I can’t always see what/who guides my steps. I know what a yes feels like in the quiet of my heart. I get lost in the anatomy of my tongue and never reach a point of articulation. I contemplate this sweetness: elm leaves take the brunt of frost, and bats can fill their bellies with insects for a while longer. Give me the joy of being a blade of grass. I want to line my heart with the essential minuscule of imperfect connection.
You do not need to explain your absences
Last updated on November 1, 2021
Jessica Coles (she/her) is a poet and editor from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Treaty 6 territory), where she lives with her family and a judgmental tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet. Many years ago, she got a B.A. in linguistics that she currently uses to write love poems. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, and You are a Flower Growing off the Side of a Cliff: a chapbook about mental health and resiliency (League of Canadian Poets chapbook series). Her first chapbook, unless you’re willing to evaporate, is available through Prairie Vixen Press. She often tweets micropoems and creative encouragement as @milkcratejess.
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I am not one thing. I can only be one thing at a time.