Until Tomorrow

The first few words are difficult.
You have to drag them out like angry prisoners.
Single words sometimes. Resistant.
Always resistant.

But you are a quiet fighter.
Self-contained as a child. More so now.
Patience is simply a polite persistence,
born of a belief in your worth,

despite past histories and abandonments.
So, you drag them out. Force out the feelings
so hard for you to allow sway,
and write them down. Capturing them

at least for the day,
Until tomorrow
when there are more.

About this poem

I am a journaler from way back. It was not easy for me to begin.

My therapist when I started, told me to simply make lists if that was all I could do. I made lists each morning of my feelings from the day before. They were short, blunt feelings. Almost like a child telling what they feel. In time, they gained nuance. And then I was able to write why I felt that way, and what those feelings did for or to me. The journals became full-bodied recollections of life in all its glory, gratitude, confusion, and pain.

When I had my cancer surgery, and healed, I sort of healed. Still, if I sit for a long time, I get up and the first few steps I move like an old man. And then, things settle, I loosen up, and three or four steps in, I walk like myself again.

Writing is like that sometimes. Sometimes hard when I am getting started again. Even after just a couple of days away. But you do it. To get right again. Even if you have to do it every day.

The picture is stock photography. The legal kind.

Tom