Inside & Meanwhile

Trying not to be too precious about this shit. To be a writer is to make some messy sentences.

Freewrite: What are you inside of?

Poem: Meanwhile by Jim Moore from The Yale Review

Prompt: After spending some time considering what you’re inside of, consider what happens outside of that sphere. Here’s a little start.

I am inside of this rainy suburb. I am inside the glossiness of wet leaves, the tapping of rain on the skylight in the morning. I am inside of my life, its ease and challenges, its beauty and grotesque messes. I am inside my sphere of control, to a fault. I decide and decide on all of the little things: dinner, coffee, appointments, meetings, emails. Though sometimes I fall in self pity to a sense of myself as being pushed and pulled by these things the truth is, I decide. I decide what to be pushed by and what to be pulled by, most days, in most things. I spend my days inside of this life of things that can be decided and when things happen that are outside of that, I am often (too often) surprised. I think it’s how I survive, maybe how we all survive–by willfully forgetting how little control we have. I am inside of something porous and I tell myself the walls are solid, though again and again I feel the weather from outside, seeping in through cracks everywhere. And meanwhile, I go on making plans, making decisions, making dinner, dreaming my small and potent dreams.