Gratitude Poem

I am grateful

for today / for my health / for my family’s health / for

these four walls and the roof above me and the door

I often stay behind / for waking up

next to someone I love / for fresh-baked cookies

in the fridge, and even for

the bitter dark roast I drank with breakfast / for

the Ten of Cups I pulled from the deck last night and for used

books stacked on my shelf that smell like other places,

that take me away from here

for just a moment / for new leaves sprouting

from my philodendron. I’m even grateful for

endless notebooks in which I scribble words and worries about

this — all of this. I’m grateful for the rain

outside my window, each drop reminding me

I am alive and have something to write about.

I have to write

about something. I’m grateful for a lot of things during

a time when it is hard almost impossible to feel

gratitude. Guilt gnaws at me, asks,

“why do you get to feel content,

even for a moment?” I do not know.

If this is contentment, then it is precarious and

uncertain, lingering in liminal space. It cannot remain

here forever. But

at this moment, at least, I am grateful.