Within each of us

There is both darkness and light.

How can the day be known

Without its ending, the night?

If you choose to ignore both sides

It doesn’t make you right

Or me wrong,

They both belong

Together, in the grander design,

Sometimes in order to align,

my thoughts must go to a very dark place,

Denying this truth won’t erase

Its existence.

Wishing wells don’t make up my total subsistence,

Creative dreaming doesn’t work well in that headspace,

I can’t always be upbeat,

Sometimes life bites me in the ass,

And my vision clouds in the morass.

Those feelings I’ll need to meet,

Not “cancel, clear, delete,”

How can you remain true,

By pretending that contrast isn’t also a part of you?

Now, I take the lessons,

Honor the darkness

Then let it pass,

In my own time,

On my own terms.

Darkness, despair,

Fills up the air

Like sudden storms,

Then gratitude gradually gives birth to a pleasure wave

Brings up a joy that is reborn,

This is my norm.