MARK
Not everything hard will break you, but it will
probably leave a mark,
like the scratch on the front bumper
from a ladder propped against the garage wall,
the one you didn’t even know you’d touched
until it started moving. Even then
a brief moment of bewilderment at this spontaneous
wobble before your brain understood
and your foot stomped the brake. That we don’t
always feel the damage
is a kind of grace, the reprieve of a door pushed
against an overstuffed closet,
solid restraint to the chaos waiting to fall
on your head the minute you forget
and pull it open. You need to deal with it,
some might say, and they may be right. But first
there’s laundry, and groceries, and teeth
to floss. Some Saturday, after you’ve said goodbye
to friends in some parking lot, you’ll head to your car
and squat in the space
and light you never have in the garage,
and take a look. Long black scrape, white paint
crimped at the edges. But not bad. Nothing worth
the trouble of fixing.
—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023
__________
Katherine Lo: “This poem came out of a conversation with a friend about the coping mechanisms we all have and how they help us move forward, even with some damage.”
