‘Poem for the week’ — “Lifeline”:
I knew it right when it happened,
the moment that everything shifted,
that I was in the in-between,
liminal space between life and death,
where there are people to notice,
choices to make, a life to examine.
I walked the path of every childhood home,
remembered each person who held me,
grieved many lost relationships and identities,
and celebrated once again the small moments
when I found my way back to myself.
But it was there that the lifeline appeared,
small as a child, myself as a child,
standing there with a vase full of tulips,
all kinds of colors I’d never seen before,
asking me what I believe is next.
How could I know? I whispered,
but she just smiled, holding out the vase,
holding out the possibility of what could be,
asking me to believe something, anything,
about the entire journey away from myself and back.
I took the vase of tulips in every color,
and she quietly smiled, tugging a string beside her,
a line, to follow toward the New Way,
toward Home, onto Another Path,
any path that might be the one to guide me
back, once again, to the life I’ve been waiting for.
-- Kaitlin Curtice
