I Fail in Many Tenses
by Donna Vorreyer
I make a list of failures. It trails unwieldy,
a weighty Jacob Marley’s chain.
I fail daily to rejoice: at the breath in my lungs,
at this long job of living,
at each bowl of hot soup with crackers,
at each simple act of being.
I walk everyday, I run, but still I fail
at getting faster, getting smaller.
“What are you running from?” a friend asks.
“Death,” I answer, and once again I have failed
to articulate the desire to cherish everything,
from the dragonfly on my shoulder
to the hair my husband leaves in the sink after
he shaves—he shaves, he is alive!—
failed to kneel at the temple of birches and oaks
in the forest preserve, at the towering skyline
of the Loop in the distance, at the brine of an olive,
at the ache in my back (burning, yet alive!) and
I am still failing to explain, but God, give me more chances
to be bad at joy, and one of them will stick, I swear.
a weighty Jacob Marley’s chain.
I fail daily to rejoice: at the breath in my lungs,
at this long job of living,
at each bowl of hot soup with crackers,
at each simple act of being.
I walk everyday, I run, but still I fail
at getting faster, getting smaller.
“What are you running from?” a friend asks.
“Death,” I answer, and once again I have failed
to articulate the desire to cherish everything,
from the dragonfly on my shoulder
to the hair my husband leaves in the sink after
he shaves—he shaves, he is alive!—
failed to kneel at the temple of birches and oaks
in the forest preserve, at the towering skyline
of the Loop in the distance, at the brine of an olive,
at the ache in my back (burning, yet alive!) and
I am still failing to explain, but God, give me more chances
to be bad at joy, and one of them will stick, I swear.
Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her poetry, fiction, and essay work have appeared in Ploughshares, Cherry Tree, Poet Lore, Salamander, Harpur Palate, Booth, and many others. She lives and creates in the Chicago area and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.