Patience

by Mindie Kniss

by Elaina Ellis

One day you will open a window, that opens to a field, that opens to a
sky, that is big enough to hold the stories you’ve been told. So you
will no longer have to carry them, like a bundle of splintering wood
for a fire that is always either hungry or spitting bitter. Instead,
you will throw out unencumbered arms like dusty shutters, inviting
Spring or Armistice. You will laugh, a weightless avalanche of
relief. It will tumble: your laughter will erode whole mountains of
regret, and you will watch how it all falls down. Falls deep. Seeds
itself in a legion of embryo pods. You will watch yourself begin
again, again. Embers and pebbles and rusty screws, cocooned as they
are orphaned. You will no longer parent them, as you leave them
glowing there, like some nuclear apology. You will give up, and give
in. You’ll go running through a whole sea of wild faces, nodding yes,
on a million stalks that bend and stretch like so many thin green
necks.

Elaina M. Ellis is en route to receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She teaches at Bent Writing Institute in Seattle, and is published in Push Magazine and in two chapbooks, Kind of Animal and Poundcake. Learn more about Elaina’s work and worship at www.tumbleme.org