You say that I don’t seem myself.

These days are long and revealing,

so every time I see one through, I grin.

Every time I make it home, I dance.

Every time I’m up again after being down, down, down;

I’m beating the odds.

Every time I don’t give up,

it’s worthy of celebration. Every time I write a poem,

it’s a bloody miracle. Of course, the me you knew before

is less available. She is keeping herself alive

and awake.

She is salt bathing and

forest walking and turning off her phone.

She is learning herself

and teaching herself piano. See the headlines.

See the persistent, awful news,

see the updates no one wants to hear or know about.

See the numbers - have you seen the numbers?

See the terrorists they will never call terrorists.

See the telling dark of the system.

See my beautiful body; offensive. My gleaming skin;

a problem. Who can still be themselves these days?

Isn’t the self a fine art composite,

an odd mosaic

a strange and growing story?

I no longer have time to lie to you.

*To be used when people expect you to still be the same and to still be doing all the taxing, unnecessary things that you were doing before, but you’re a shifting work in progress, and you wake up and know something is different and you know that thing is you. Sometimes, the right things shift in the night. You have emerged altered and surer with new intentions. Today is a New Day. You are beginning to see things for what they are and what they are becoming, and now you think twice about who has access to you and who you will allow to question you because, honestly, you have always deserved more.

© Yrsa Daley-Ward & The Josh Craig 2024

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