root cellar

Sometimes I stumble and find myself
lurking near some root of regret:

memory of a time when all I had to do 

was apologize, swallow pride, walk up stairs

to dinner, to renewed laughter, to life.

I never made this choice, I whisper

in a panic--first in alarm and desperation

at what hellscape I have unfurled but

then in fear and recognition of the thing 

from which I have been hiding all along.

There never was a time in which I said,

"No longer that, now this!" and felt joy:

neither at the start, nor at the end of--

I only know I longed for what it could be

and later dreaded climbing up those stairs.

What's in the cellar can't be killed:

not so much because of what it is but I

cannot even face it; I have never faced it;

I am too much a coward to even observe

the great harm my cowardice has caused.

For example, here is a girl who will live

her whole life never remembering what it was

to have Mom and Dad downstairs together,

maybe listening to the radio, maybe laughing,

maybe praying together, maybe having wine.

And let us peruse some aisles here of grief:

the secret silent tears young boys have spilled,

nights of agony for some middle-aged woman

who lost her husband to an unobserved thought,

starting over, folding ends upon each other.

Add to the basket this leafing plant of shame,

of dashed expectations and hopes for all who knew

the promise of those earlier years. Emotions peak

and ebb, and sour, and become a blank stare: exactly

how it is I languidly arrived in this dark place.

I'll do it all again. Lazily I raise hopes all around

and lazily I dash them down: on accident, I think,

but never say, as if it mattered. The pain I caused,

I numbly hope will free some souls from this dumb loop.

The root twists into my dry soil and I look away.

Sitting silent, sitting still, eyes unseeing glaze across

a crashing wave of time: I do not move. I do not move,

and even this is causing harm. Glancing up, I glimpse

a child's face; my own young dirty fingers digging dirt--

recalling my small fist's delight in snapping shallow roots--

1/21/2026