INFj autopsy

the autopsy will find —
coloured flowers in my grey matter
still-beating poetry in my heart
unspent ink in every organ
blood saturated with love
bones mineral’d by life’s rough days
muscles fiber’d by courage and fear intertwined
and a slightly crushed but glittering soul

Terri Guillemets

♯lifegoals

“I really would like to stop working forever — never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now — and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends… Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence.”

—Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)

Audio books

“I just don’t get how you can listen to a book. There’s no fonts to look at, there’s no papers to touch — they’ve removed two of the senses. And the truth is, sometimes I lick them, so that’s three.”

—Brick Heck, The Middle, “Pitch Imperfect,” 2017, written by Rich Dahm, season 8, episode 12

Rejoice, lament, meander

black eyes and broken bones
rainbows and sugared donuts
overthinking and over-loving
have gotten me to this point
and still I’ve never yet made
a five-year freaking plan —
and even if I did — nothing
ever actually goes
                           according
      to
                      plan
anyway

Terri Guillemets

Spiraling

midlife changes curled-up
forties are fiddlehead ferns
it doesn’t look like much
until it becomes unfurled
and once we get it open
things may break apart —

eventually nests unwind
but will we bear fortitude
to turn that new life into
something just as beautiful
and yet even more free
spiraling towards fifty?

Terri Guillemets