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.