futility
this drive to be
the something you all
dreamed for me
i can’t express –
just wordlessness
that strives to rise from
restlessness
this mystery
’tis plain to see
has failed to match
my lock – your key
i’ve tried for years
and dried my tears
my reasoned reasons
find no ears
you misconstrue
my cosmic stew
while I’m explaining
what is true
it is as if
i’ve caught a whiff
of unknown futures
off this cliff
so I must leap
no longer sleep
to feel the wonder
of the deep
beyond the shoal
awash, my soul
i’m bathed in sacred
self-control
what does that mean?
you’ll never glean;
exulansis.
end of scene.
In today’s (optional) prompt, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by an entry from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The entries are very vivid – maybe too vivid! But perhaps one of the sorrows will strike a chord with you, or even get you thinking about defining an in-between, minor, haunting feeling that you have, and that does not yet have a name.
exulansis
n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.
defying atrophy 