A Dedication to Survival

Yellow collects at the edges like patient lightning,

pollen of an idea that keeps not dying.

A fly enters wearing the day as a helmet.

It rubs its small hands together, inventing hours.

Every circle it draws on the air is a signature:

still here, still here, still here.

The lamp hums its approval in lowercase.

I make a list on the inside of my wrist:

bread, water, a sentence that can carry itself.

The ink refuses to dry,

good,

let it stay wet enough to change its mind mid-letter.

The body prefers verbs you can act out without witnesses.

My pockets hold two reliable eggs and a rumor of a third.

Somewhere a kettle graduates from steam to song.

I appoint the sink minister of sudden mercy.

Its sermon: everything that arrives is already moving.

The fly attempts to bargain with the window.

The window offers a demonstration of silence.

Between them: a bright arithmetic of almost.

I learn it by ear. I pass. The grade is noise.

I keep water in the shape of the cup until thirst recognizes me.

I keep salt where the mouth remembers its name.

I keep a small field under the tongue for emergency flowers.

I keep the light turned to “faint persistence”

because bright can lie and dark can edit too much.

The ceiling blinks. The clock grows a new elbow.

Dust migrates toward meaning and stops to tie its shoe.

I sweep the corner where yesterday is trying to molt.

It leaves behind a careful husk, the size of a plan.

I hang it on a nail next to a coat that still smells like weather.

The fly composes a brief philosophy on the rim of a glass.

Clause one: continue.

Clause two: continue without permission.

Clause three: if you must fail, do it loudly enough to count as proof of life.

The glass agrees by remaining fragile.

There is a door pretending to be a question.

There is a question pretending to be breath.

I answer by not stopping.

I answer by making the smallest possible ladder out of the next minute.

I climb it until the floor forgets my weight.

The fly lands on my knuckle and becomes punctuation.

We share some grammar: lean toward the edge,

choose motion over furniture,

listen for the window that keeps speaking even when closed.

We do not agree about glass and that is also exciting.

If ceremony is required, let it be the kettle’s brief roar.

If witness is required, let it be the yellow margin that refuses erasure.

If anthem is required, let it be the soft thud before the next attempt.

If faith is required, let it be a practice of breath measured in stubborn.

I pin nothing to certainty except the next inhale.

I make a blanket from receipts and call it weather.

I stand up in the middle of the ordinary and bow to it.

The bow returns as warmth in the wrists.

The wrists remember doors.

And when the hour asks what I am doing here,

I point to the fly drawing circles on the air like a saint with small shoes,

to the glass admitting light in pieces,

to the room that keeps choosing to exist despite the dust’s opinion

and I say, simply:

a dedication to survival.