A poem for you today:

The Thing Is

by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you've held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

I love everything about this poem. I love the title. I love the imagery. I love the syntax, punctuation, and diction. I love the theme of grief, and of loving life.

How do we go through what we do, and yet still decide to love life?

I have no suffered any specific or extreme crises/deaths in my life. I have not underwent catastrophes or poverty or war or chaos, even. But sometimes it's hard to stomach life. I guess that's what the thing is.