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.
@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. 💙
My eyes welled up at word of your missing ones.
Thank you for sharing them.
Thank *you* for still being here, too.
@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.