Respect that the words don’t know how to flow today, love. They congeal and coagulate. You can’t be part of them. Viscosity is a bitch and so is insolubility. Put the stopper in one bottle and unscrew the cap on another. Your Google search for thin liquids brings up articles on dysphagia, and you’ve never had trouble swallowing gin. Maybe there’s a martini you’re missing out on while you’re trying to write. Uncork absinthe’s sadness and let it breathe into your basement. You’re not really thinking of drinking; inebriation keeps being a metaphor for organs you don’t want to discuss. You never forget that the body is simultaneously literal and figurative, and the liver was once the source of emotions. When you wish emotions had a source, you look up binaural frequencies to boost dopamine. Love, my love, my treasure, there is nothing here to fix. You let the ice crack into irregular beauty: sometimes it’s almost invisible.
Poem for a day when I cannot write
Last updated on December 6, 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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