We’ve all suffered at some point in our lives. We suffer from bad decisions, death, misfortune, and uncertainty. We suffer from from family, injustice, accidents, and betrayal.

Through regular life, we suffer. I suffer.

I suffer like you. From emotional, unhealing welts to misunderstanding and rejection. I suffer, too.

When I suffer, I grow quiet. I become opposite of how I normally behave. I take in.

Poetry and poetic moments get me through suffering times. A gentle lift, poetry is. An infant’s inability to embrace, a cherry oak door ajar, browning pages in a children’s book. Poetic icing sweetens life, slightly. Just enough to remind me all is not lost in hurting, in struggle. I am not lost.

There is beauty in small cracks of the world, in squints.

It does not take pain away or undo confusion. Poetry immortalizes a minutia of life that, otherwise, would have gone unnoticed.

Suffering slows me. I, then, notice.