Wear in Your Shoes, or, A Mantra for A Winter Day, or, A January Dream

Wear down pens.
Run out of ink.
Smash coffee cups in frustration, ceramic
shattering in a wave over cheap hardwood.
Tear holes in shirts –
in shoes.
Leave burn marks on jeans, on countertops,
on your body.
Bite.
Scrape.
Break the cracked winter ski of dry hands,
crush the shape of a pen into them.
Breathe,
and smoke.
Blink in the wind
and wipe away sudden tears.
Pick up brown dead leaves and crunch them to dust
to smell the last bit of September.
Tie your shoes the wrong way, forever.
Write in dusk, gathering dawn –
Write drunk.
Drink, and smile.
Drink, and regret it.
Breathe hope in with the sharp air of another January.
Wait, and worry, and be selfless for a friend who will need you,
because one day you’ll need her shoulders
to heft your own load.
Lie, and hate it.
Lie and say that you don’t.
Lie, and say that you don’t lie.
Decide to stop lying.
Worry that you won’t keep that promise.
Keep every promise, because you don’t make them often, and
they are only for the ones you love.
Love, always.
Love carefully.
Love honestly.
Smile, because you love.
Smile and drink coffee.
Smile at every sunset and dawn.
Smile, and read good books.
Read worse poetry.
Smile when you’re walking down the sidewalks of your city,
wearing in your shoes.