Why do words get put on paper at moments of despair?

When it’s a race between the ink and the tears

to transfer their essence to the page?

Aren’t the giddy moments to be memorialized?

Isn’t delight worthy of choice phrases?

 

True elation – a moment in time

when your heart could burst and spill the joy

as far as the edges of your universe.

Fragments of time to be savored

and later reviewed with fresh pleasure.

 

With deepest meaning of their own

and needing no embellishment

to sparkle in the gloom of winter..

To keep you company with warmth engendered

from other treasured artifacts.

 

Happiness is not simply the absence of pain

It is a balance of accepting what is

while maintaining a tenuous grip on what could be.

Of comfort in your true persona

Of knowing how to love.

 

And when, combined with long-awaited

declarations and promise of new directions

your heart gets to that bursting point,

catharsis is as close as  pen or keyboard,

expression venting the swell of feeling.

 

Preferable to indiscriminate disclosure

The wrong word in the wrong ear

Longer lasting reminder of

an exquisite moment,

part of your special history.