Changing Your Mind Isn't Always as Simple as Changing Your Clothes

 

My mother asks me to tell her 

something good that has happened in my life. 

I think of you, 

and my tongue immediately tenses sourly 

and twists sideways, 

and I turn my head so she doesn’t see. 

I am asked to think of something sweet 

and still, my mind 

plagued by toxicity and traumatized childhood memories

goes to pain instead. 

It is a habit I must unpeel from my soul, 

marrow I must drain straight out of the bone. 

Habits like this make one wish 

that changing your mind 

was as simple 

as changing your clothes, 

but it isn’t always. 

I breathe in through my nose, 

and pull my eyelids closed tightly. 

I think of when I woke up this morning, 

body still cozy beneath the blanket, 

the dogs nestled warmly and peacefully against me, 

the sunlight drenching in through the window, 

the birds chirping outside from a nearby tree, 

and that there is no where else I am supposed to be 

​

but right here. 

​

Waking up this morning, 

I tell her. 

​

And it’s nice to mean it 

for once.