What skill would you like to learn?

I want to learn how to make a grocery list

without crying in the condiment aisle.

I want to learn the skill of sleeping

in a bed that doesn’t hold his shape.

I want to relearn the art of staying

through a whole pot of coffee

without leaving my body.

Everyone else seems to know

how to do these things.

I used to.

I want to learn the skill of remembering birthdays

without collapsing into the corner of a room,

hands folded over the echoes of what was lost.

I want to learn the skill of standing still

while the wind of everything I’ve survived

presses against me like a tide.

I want to learn the mundane

as if it were a ritual

that might save me from vanishing completely.

Now they’re lost arts,

like binding books by hand

or listening for nightingales

that no longer sing.