Everything, Everything

by Rebecca Brock

Even as a kid, I flinched
to see things broken.
As if broken things
are not just evidence,
but judgment.
I’ve watched others demolish
their life, the fall out immediate
and over the years like a shadow.
Maybe I do want something
to blame besides myself.
I have carried so much
for so long. I admit I don’t know
how or where to set it down.
Lately, I walk the dog: steadily,
daily, the same path,
as if it is a religion, even in the rain,
and I tell him, I’m sorry I can’t
write a poem about how much
I love you. He looks back
and up at me sometimes
as if he knows, body deep,
and without saying out loud.
I don’t tell him that, lately,
I am frightened or bewildered
like a child asking why
is everything, everything?
And, how?

::

Rebecca Brock’s work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Rust + Moth, THRUSH, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize and the Editor’s Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023) is her first full length collection. She has been a flight attendant for most of her adult life and is still surprised by this fact. Idaho born, she lives in Virginia with her family. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.

Image: Theodor Vasile

ID: a small brown dog on a leash.