On the Ropes

I'm tired.A different kind of tired. A tired in my bones. I feel like I've been fighting all year long. Maybe there's something to the idea that whatever you were doing when the new year rang in is what you'll be doing all year. I was fighting with P2AD. It wasn't "the" fight. It was a semi playful one, I wanted him to come to me and he wanted the same. I would have to cave if I wanted to see him. Of course. He and I proceeded to be in conflict for the next five months. Until the night he invited me to his house where he ignored me. Leaving me crying myself to sleep vowing that I would be stronger tomorrow. Is it tomorrow yet?

Thinking I'd be writing my dissertation I chose not to teach this fall. Forgoing the extra income deciding I could live just one semester on loans. Except my loans have been messed up since May. Borrowing scrimping saving hustling charging...praying and hoping. Fighting just to make rent each month. This is the first month I don't have it. Any of it. Nowhere close to any of it. Pending. Waiting. Fighting for my check to simply disburse. Please, I beg the powers that be, please hear the urgency in my voice. Sense my state of emergency. I'm too angry to cry. Or scream. Or find the lesson. I don't have time to sift for wisdom.

Then the new strand. I meet you. You sink beneath my skin polluting my entirety and then claim all you want or ever wanted was freedom. Well then how is it that you came to occupy my veins? Same story different day. You're beautiful. You're intelligent. You have so much to offer. Rich soil stripped of everything good crumbling like powder in my hands. There's no more fight left.

The tiniest glimmer of hope barely flickering quietly whispering "You're not out. Don't give up, you're on the ropes but you've got breath in your lungs and fire in your belly, you're almost there." And God I hope it's so.