My Chair of Tears

Sunflowers weep brittle petals

from their frosted death mask,

and I beg spring to come and

take the funeral from my garden.

Winter has written so many

entries in its journal of bone chill

I breathe its story each morning.

Pain walks through my thighs

on the command of a barometer,

a stab here, a burn there…

a Pinocchio dance on legs

too stiff to react as human.

In my chair of tears I wonder

if this petrification will bring me

closer to humility or will I merely

live my own wasting one splinter at a time.

If not for love, I would make my own

journey to spring, but to pill myself

into eternity would break the heart

of a man who would bear my pain

if the universe would allow him.

Hope is truly fragile, a paper thin glass

one demon away from shattering.

I must have faith I’m a day closer

to a robin song, and not a hymn sung

where I am coffined in silence.

  ©Susie Clevenger 2018

This was written from my experiences in 2002 with Fibromyalgia while living in Broken Arrow, Ok. This winter because of the colder weather in Texas where I now reside I have been on a roller coaster of flares, but I am in a much better place both physically and emotionally. Writing and my fledgling artistic attempts with beading have been my salvation. Yes, the garden outside my window suffered the devastation of a hard frost, but my spirit has never surrendered its green leaves.

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