Do you have to write one every day?
a good friend asked when the month began
with its weiting challenge I’ve grown to love.
Her concern was for my exhaustion,
the extra work the challenge daily required
for what exactly do you get out of it?
You could be sleeping more.

I sleep enough as it is,
sleep amd lose myself,
nodding off even as I write or type.
It would be so easy to give in,
letting the tide bring in the ocean black
because what would I be missing anyway?
Few would think anything if I were missing one day.

But the thing about such unknowns
is someone out there knows it.
Any gap would haunt me
as a day I tried and failed
or worse, failed to try,
a slipping away from who I am,
a weakening of passion.

I hope you can see, friend, villain,
what’s then gained from these trials.
I may not look much better myself
but I’m free of the emotions poured into this.
Certainly didn’t mean to bleed everywhere
but sadness is part of the spectrum of human emotion,
giving it a literary placement.

It scares me what I might have been
had the words never taken me over.
I think of fellow poets, musicians,
artists, novelists, dreamers who put it all out there
as a way of working through their pains.
Without such dreams holding us together
we are just tragedies that haven’t hit the news yet.

As it is though, I still stand today,
if I still haven’t accomplished all I hoped for.
I worked through this darkness
same as every other nightmare of the heart
catching me fast asleep,
all by being true to myself every day.
I am a poet after all.