by Laci Mosier
At first, you will feel the gentle tremors of a life you love
changing. Don’t worry, you are shedding your skin, my dear.
Your molecules are shifting. Your heart is breaking.
Slowly and then all at once, you will find yourself sobbing
on the bathroom floor, sitting in the shower, letting the tap
water baptize you in the name of heartbreak and fresh beginnings.
You will ache. You will not change the sheets. You will stare
at the popcorn ceiling above your bed for too long, too many
mornings in a row.
Your friends will come over. They will peel his shirt off of you.
You will dance, dance, dance. The sweat will cleanse whatever the
shower could not.
In the morning, you will cry more.
You will paint your living room purple.
You will meditate, badly.
One by one, you will take down the photos, throw out the ticket
stubs, hide the postcards, letters and love notes. You will put them
neatly into a paper box you keep in the back of your closet.
You will sit on the floor of your apartment. If you are very lucky, your best friend
will sit with you, pressing her hands into yours, her forehead onto yours. She will tell you she is taking some of your pain because it is too heavy for one person to carry.
You will burn with rage.
Burn sage.
Burn toast in the oven.
Then you will call on a tarot card reader. She will tell you that everything
that has happened has made you infinitely, irrevocably stronger. You can
tame lions, she will say.
The Ace of Cups is yours, she will say. The universe wants to give you everything
you’ve ever wanted—the King of Swords is all that’s in the way, she will say.
You will go to yoga and weep in downward dog. The tears will run
out of your eyes as the sweat drips into them and you will breathe,
breathe, breathe, becoming one with the universe.
You will eat vegetables.
You will change the sheets.
You will open the drapes.
You will cut your hair, but not too short, this time.
You will adopt a dog, jump out of a plane, ride horses.
You will change jobs, change apartments, change cities, but only if you want to.
Buy plants.
Breathe.
And when you’ve done everything you possibly can to weather the
storm, you will at last give in to its flood, letting it wash over you
as you willingly, bravely, quietly sit in it.
And slowly, but all at once, you will feel the fluttering of a new
life, one you couldn’t have imagined before, softly and suddenly
beginning, and you will be ready to give it your all.
Laci Mosier holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poems and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, including Hobart, Poetry Northwest, Rejection Letters, Jellyfish Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Maine Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, in an apartment filled with plants, art, books, and sunshine.