There will, one day, be another war, and another, and the theory of everything comes down to grass and is simply grass, which grows long and green and endlessly. There are one hundred ways to destroy it, and there one hundred more ways it will find its way back out of the dirt.
from Mikkels Plass
If you could erase yourself, wipe the pink shavings from the paper, and write a new story, with a different obstacle, and a new climax, what would it be? Would you keep any of the original players? Because they were what held you back from that starring role – the one where you play your most honest self. The one where you went back out, but unlike so many others, came back inside. If you could rebuild your life, would you actually want to change anything at all? Would it really make a difference? Is it really nature versus nurture? Because that seems like a choice.
Michael Lee’s The Only Worlds We Know (Button Poetry) is that choice. It’s the choice to breathe. It’s the understanding that you are “alive because of how many times [you] have failed.” It’s the learned experience that both keeps you from turning around and makes you hesitate to move forward. It’s an acknowledgement of those we’ve lost in the fire, and those we’ve gained because of it. That, it’s never the drug, but rather the longing to quell the quiet.
Lee wants us to know that “Eventually, everything that can look will look / away, and our memory, which is a kind of faith, / will be unable to carry even itself.”
Purchase your copy of The Only Worlds We Know from Button Poetry.