Every Day

Every Day
-by Laurie Benson©2019

Before I wake and sleep
it seems,
that tears roll down my cheeks,
every day
this October month.

We're marking off the days
at school, until the thirty-first.
The Epic Celebration for kids,
a day to pretend you are
someone,
someone different than
yourself.

I am marking off the days
that I stay sober, grateful,
but triggered because of fall.
The leaves, the cold, the
end of the sun.

"I am too much in the sun,"
I think of Hamlet, and wonder
about fall, the sun's rays
a little bit less direct
 on our twenty-three degree
tilted
earth.

How can I be too much in the sun
when it is early morning,
or late at night, and my 
face is being washed with
tears before it's even been
washed in the basin?  

I've felt this way before-
too noticed.
Bright lights,
on the stage and
not in a performing kind
of way, but in the way where
you don't want to be seen,
because of shame,
I think.

What can remove the mask
of pretend from my life?
Who can wipe away my tears,
and know how hard I try?
And why in the fall do
I always feel like I'm falling?
Tilted more than twenty-three
degrees off center?

The allergy.  How misunderstood.
Seasonal, situational, alcohol?
A line from the script I didn't
understand before.
So I'll count down days as well,
until one more year
is marked away.
A sobriety birthday,
and realize the
allergy I have,
doesn't have to
be consuming or
understood,
just acknowledged,
and given to God.
A line in the play,
the story
of me, being true
to me.

Comments