I Want to Love Waking Up

Written By Lynne Schilling

After “I Want to Love the World,” by Christine Potter

I want to love waking up again, but for months
I’ve been waking up to thoughts of being a day 
closer to death, to images of the bony ribcages 

of starving children, to the blankness of hope. 
I want to be light as birdsong at dawn, but instead, 
I am the heavy keening of families of deportees. 

I want to love waking up, but joy evades my grip, 
drips off my fingers and evaporates, like drops 
of water on a hot pan. I want to wake up happy, 

but doom is leaning on her horn under my window, 
making thoughts of anything else impossible. I force
myself to get up, and only then, when I feel my feet 

on the floor, do I remember poetry—a few lines
I want to revise, a poem I want to reread & that 
is enough to get me down the stairs to my coffee.

The New Verse News, Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Lynne Schilling
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