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House Cleaning

 I've been having nightmares about empty cheese bins at the local HEB and hotel rooms full of kittens or     dogs which I have to conceal from the staff and to which I've lost someone else's key. I've been having nightmares about too many things poking out of too many barely closed doors.

The dogs are happy to sleep through the chill weather but I have been restless in my hibernation. I'm not reading because I'm trying to shove words on paper and it feels...selfish. Like ignoring friends in the next room just to work on perfecting a wing liner in the bathroom mirror. 

I think, sometimes, I need to take an axe to the root of the distraction. And sometimes I am the root of the distraction. 

How do you know when you've come to the end of your poetry journey? For me, when the joy of reading is soured by envy. And the sour isn't worth it.  When the house is clean, the poems will be in a box and the box will be somewhere I can visit rather than live. 

-- chrissa

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