Also, my piece wasn't chosen for Rattle's Poets Respond this week, so I can share it here with you instead.
It was inspired by news of a Russian woman who learned that she'd lived her whole life with a needle in her head - clearly a failed attempt at infanticide in the 1940s, when life was hard, and many thought better days would never come.
How striking, no? All the things that do not kill us... even when we're sure they must.
Thank you so much for sitting with it, Tarnagh. 💙
@MLClark
😭
Kinda hard to read to the end. The screen was getting blurry. It tears at the heart and gives hope at the same time. Thank you for sharing.
💜🙏
Thank you so much for your presence with the piece. It means the world to me to know it struck true. 💙
@MLClark
💜
Read through it again (because that's what you do when something draws out strong emotions), and got chocked up again at, "often enough, at least, to survive." Missing folks who didn't know how to survive. Thankful for the ones that could.
My eyes welled up at word of your missing ones.
Thank you for sharing them.
Thank *you* for still being here, too.
@MLClark Just read about that the other day. Well written.
Thank you, Nick. I hope all's faring well in your slice of this strange world these days.
@MLClark You as well. Not on here or anywhere that much. Work and a lot of traveling for one of my jobs. Hoping to pick up my writing again soon. I just text myself crap & then I remember to work on it.
Beautiful, compelling, poignant. Thank you for sharing it with us.
@MLClark
Wow - your words leave me speechless. 🙏
@MLClark
Thank you so much. I needed this today. ❤️