Camille Gladney Schmoutz, Upon Awakening (mixed media)
Today I take note of the trees and the blossoms on the trees
without thinking of dying. When I see a
woman wiping the mouth of her child and
then hurrying to the bus, I think I am just like
her. Every longing isn’t lined with pain.
Every ache isn’t an ache for myself. I am
anyone: the girl sitting on her hands in front
of the Shell station, the man steaming shirts
at the dry cleaner, the stranger I recognize the
smell of, the woman who keeps to herself. I
rest, I work, I hurry forward to what I will
become. My future is not a long distance call
tumbling in static but here now, open, really
open, like something young coming together
and reaching out. For the first time in
months I love what is right in front of me: the
lead sky, the old rain in the gutter like rotten
fruit. There doesn’t need to be great
distance. When I think about God I think of
how things transform – a huge stonewall in
the middle of the night is an open field by
morning. And when the rain comes, and it
always comes, dark as the wind over the
forest and loud as bells clamoring through
trees hissing like madness, I will pull my
name back. I will carry it out in front of me
and give it to anyone, cold and wet and in the
middle of sorry, sorry for everything so ugly.
I am done being afraid. I am done with
sadness like a fake moon all the time out my
window. I can love someone who is not
dissolving into the horizon.