The way the light gets in or out

The Doubt We Hold Dear

We’re always moving and nothing stays still.
A woman you may see for the very last time
stands at the curb, turns, and walks off with a teary
smile into her absence from the rest of your life.

The stories that break our hearts are written this way.
Movies, books, songs, a solo dancer alone onstage.
Nothing stays still long enough. If it did, we might
realize how dizzy we are in our lives, how everything

spins at an angle to whatever we pass for being calm,
settled. So we queue the heart to hurt in a thousand
different ways, lie to ourselves that this is the only
way the light gets in or out, but we don’t ever really

believe it works this way, that what we feel we feel
forever and merely learn to live with it every day.
So she turns and smiles, again and again, almost the
same way every time, as if it never happened at all.

Joseph Gallo
June 21, 2011