Living Alone Expertise

Living Alone Expertise by debgrant

Living alone expertise comes over seasons of time

since dorms

or divorces

or deaths.

My expertise is long but no deeper than the time since dorms.

I take steps deliberately.

Gravity is a prankster and a terrorist

Always waiting for the moment of not paying attention.

I would like to avoid a conversation over my broken body.

If I fall from a mountain, they’ll say I was doing what I loved.

If I fall from the stairs in my house, they’ll say,

“I wonder how long she’s been lying there?”

I chew my food deliberately. Because flavor is erotic.

I would also like to avoid choking and having the presence of mind

to fling my diaphragm onto the back of a chair while choking and thinking

this is an awful way to die…even if I died doing what I loved.

I live my days deliberately.

It makes me feel a little Walt Whitman-y.

My walden aloneness consists of careful and intoxicating steps

through a tapestry of elements of earth, water, wind, and fire.

I move through my life deliberately

Not willing to give gravity a way to take my breath away just yet.

I live gratefully because

Fear is an awful way to spend a day.

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