Devote yourself to knitting or gardening.
Lock the door. Extinguish all light
and rehearse hibernation. Make a list
of everyone you’ve ever loved. Beg
for answers. Count all the seeds
on a strawberry, all the threads
in a sweater, all the ways bodies forgive.
Collect yourself, then step outside
into the cold gasping of springtime
and trace the contrails, their geometry
on the margin of world, a diagram
of purpose. Ask for nothing
but tomorrow, again.
Give up everything else. Then keep going.
Davin Faris is a climate organizer, writer, and student at St. John’s College, in Annapolis, Maryland. His writing has been featured by the New York Times, Patagonia Magazine, Slingshot Collective, Livina Press, Ink & Marrow, and others. He is a submission reader for ONLY POEMS.