vise

i've heard of this monkey trap

rice in a box, in its side a hole

big enough for an empty hand to enter

too small for a fist of rice to exit

idiot monkey. be free. let it go

~

insomnia used to cradle me each night

unwelcome guest

so i made a practice - a recitation

to evict it from my bed:

"let my body be tired,

let my mind be quiet,

let my heart be at peace.

surrender."

that final word, a post-script prayer suffixed

after weeks of nights of hanging

just above the black

toeing its oily film

determined to plunge,

but i'd cling —

until forty minutes before the alarm, i'd give up on sleep

and pass out.

dangling awake

until i let go

~

we started fucking again

when we started the divorce

all the good reasons why we didn't before,

were ending with the marriage

so we let them go

~

two flags in a hurricane:

the one fixed to its pole,

lashed, wrenched, twisted,

disordered into fibers by the persistent storm.

the other, rivets popped, tears free,

and it mounts the storm,

rides its energy,

and lands, tasting the earth of another town.

~

"i bet, once we split,

your career takes off,"

she said weeks before the end.

"all that energy, freed up,

no longer holding on to this."

for the first time in my life,

with someone else:

in almost perfect tandem,

together,

we let go.

❦

i've held this poem too long

a pear in a backpack

idiot writer. let it go. be free