Inspiration Arrives on a Hot Summer Night

I keep having these little fits these days,
usually at night.
It starts off with confessions of depression,
self diagnosed, of course
and proceeds to little tears.

And I feel terrible about it because
I watch you trying to make right what you can’t
make right.
What no one can make right.

You say good things.
You remind me that we aren’t a part of this whole system.

You talk to me about how when it’s all over
we’ll go travel the country, on foot.
We’ll walk through the Appalachians.
And what it will be like to come up on New Orleans over that long bridge.

I talk about Slab City like we are already citizens.
And this all makes us feel better.

And in the end you pull out that scene
where the old boxer tells his kid
that nothing hits harder than life.
You say this is the ‘big guns”
And we laugh and again I cry

and this time
because sometimes you need a better excuse
than weakness
and fear
and anger
something better than envy, even
we decide to blame
it on my period that won’t seem to show up.