The Secret to not feeling pain
is to swim in a world of hurt
so thick and profound
you cannot tell the difference between
agony and getting by.

I’m sorry if this
suggests that personal heartbreak
is my job to such a point
that I appear to have tattooed it
on my eyes, shading everything.

Believe me, I wish that were true
for it would suggest that I believed
in redemption, that I believed that
erasure was possible with
work that allows for art’s divine intervention.

I might believe that, if
the right god had ever appeared to offer
a hand. If the art had ever taken me closer
to that throne — bah. There’s no
one throne, no matter what the books say.

I’ve read them all, even written a few.
The secret to not feeling agony
is to make a place to put its overflow.
Art can do that. It can’t erase it completely,
but out there, somewhere: equilibrium.