Sheryl St. Germain

In Recovery: a Suite

1

We used to think there were no words

that could reach us,

unknot us from the cage of our lives,
only the music of substances,

            the pulsing, breathless,

            of what we had become.

Now, something in us has paused.
We’re commas, dashes—
 

even after twenty years or more
still inside a prepositional phrase

always in remission,

always praying for grace

we will never arrive

at past tense.

2

And anyway,
it’s the wrong word for what we are. 

We’re not re-covered

           we are revealed.

3

What else we are: 
 

broken things

shells, wrecked against
an apathetic shore

                          until
                                    the inner whorls of our lives

crack, revealing
our most intimate

architecture 

we are
            sea glass:
                        bottles shattered

                        abandoned,
                        lips worn to a dull shine

            we hope
            someone will scavenge for us, see beauty
            in how damage has shaped us

we are
           cracks in ancient walls

            where small flowers

                        have rooted

we are

            loose tiles in the floor of an old building
           that sing when you walk over them

we are
            gnarly knots in trunks
            where once were branches      

we are

crevasses in the glacier
  of a ravaged heart—

we are

            invitations:

            here, here is the very place

           to enter us.

4

still

            there are days you grit through

            wishing for that one thing

            that would allow you
           to not be here now

                        days when you are
                       surprised
                       to have woken at all

5

you work on a scarf knitting
and unknitting, starting again
so many times

you feel like Penelope

you write one small new thing,

clean one small room.

6

We are Buddhists and gardeners,

yoga instructors and hair dressers,

teachers and real estate brokers,

we are writers, painters, musicians,
bartenders, waitresses, comics.
Some of us are still funny. Some of us
are still sad. Some of us get our kids back.
Some of us do not.

Sometimes someone we knew in that other life

dies, a lover or a son or a dear friend,
and some of us relapse and some

of us do not.  Some of us travel as far
away as we can: to Alaska, or Indonesia,
some of us stay home,
going to meetings and mentoring other lost ones.

At night, sometimes we close our eyes
remembering the best and worst of it,
the ecstasy in the blood, the taste

of dying.

We are not happy, exactly,

nothing, as someone once wrote,
as simple as that.

When the dawn calls roll,
our bodies respond:  present.

And we often wake
grateful for breath
in ways we never were in that other life,

believing again in the journey.

Nick Flynn