daily prayer

lillianna resnik | Spring 2021

(as told to the steam-fogged dorm bathroom mirror)

And i will tear open the world 
Like a premature bud 
And let the petals, soft as whispers, gather in my cupped hands
And it will be an act of creation 
And i will ignore the blinkered, appraising gazes
Of the light that never rests 
And lock my eyes instead on the stars that fall to earth
And the few that still cling, stubbornly, to the sky
And i will evict myself 
From those pillowed recesses that so easily give
And more easily take 
And push myself--disheveled, stippled with gooseflesh—
Out into it all 
And we will both weep with joy 
And i will stop my work of distillation, 
Of brewing myself to a fog in hope 
I’ll melt sweet and breeze-kissed on tongues 
I never fathom would prepare themselves 
For my palate 
And i will grow strong, ugly roots through 
Weary soles 
And let myself be anchored so tenaciously 
That I will stop denying that this life, this world 
Is mine too. 
And maybe I can say I’ve really lived 
And maybe I can really live so I can say it 
And maybe one day I will write poetry