Everyday Danger

We walk battlefields every day

We go out into the cross-fires of aching perils

We pile on our heavy armor, our talismans

Praying we have a chance to deflect what might pierce us
Praying that like an action-movie hero,

we can somehow run through the enemy fire

between the raindrops

and come out spotless

Whether we like it or not,
Every one of us is armed
And not one of us is invincible

And we look around and see the fallen

And we see:

Danger is not a switch,

But a sliding scale

And the choice is to fear or to move,

To hide, or to breathe

For me, it depends on the day.

Resilience

My cell phone
has felt cold murky water
clasp hands over its head,
pushing it away from the air,
seeping between its buttons toward its green plastic motherboard.

It has tangoed with the ground, the flattest, hardest partner,
bouncing, skidding, sliding,
each hit rattling it through its casing to its wires.

It has pushed through on the last electron
clinging to its battery,
running on sparks, on pure momentum.

But like an old warrior,
like a creature that rises from ruins and cannot be crushed,
like a woman who leaves her cheating husband in the divorce room,
head held high, bright red stilettos, not a care in the world,
my phone still lights up and vibrates
when I get a text.
Scratched up, chipped,
but not a crack in sight.