Treasured Missteps

 
Childhood cracked open under my feet
like a lightning bug jar dropped on the porch,
light scattering in frantic zigzags
before disappearing into grass that smelled
of wet nickel and summer heat.

Each mistake made the world lurch sideways:
a shouted refusal that bounced off kitchen walls
and ricocheted back into my chest,
a regret that fluttered like a trapped robin
inside the hollow between heartbeats.

Yet even then, my small griefs
were teaching my pulse to pivot,
to find direction in the tremor,
a rehearsal for forgiveness
that neither my heart nor mind
could yet agree to name.

Through teens into the slackened stretch of middle age,
errors arrived like sudden windblasts
shoving open a door I meant to keep closed.
Grievances stacked in my ribs,
a clutter of sharp-edged tin cans
rattling whenever I tried to breathe.
Hostile reactions leapt from me
like sparks kicked out of an overloaded outlet,
startling even my own shadow into stepping back.
Fatigue dragged its cold fingers down my spine,

making thoughts stutter, mind drifting like smoke
while heart clenched like a fist
trying not to punch through its own cage.

In isolation, time moved strangely:
days folded inward, origami fledglings
that refused to fly,
yet the smallest will to survive
kept fluttering in my pocket,
a pulse-light trembling that I mistook for failure
but was really the first choreography
of heart and mind learning to move together.

 Now older…

 I sift the long debris field
of all those misshapen hours and days.
Memories shift under my hands,
some slide away like cold fish,
others thrum like wires pulled tight between thunderclaps.

My missteps glow unexpectedly:
weathered driftwood carried ashore
by storms that once threatened to drown me.
I weep at the smeared outline of myself,
identity drifting like watercolor

before the paper has fully dried,
heart wanting softness,
mind demanding a map.

But as the tears fall,
they move something loose inside me:
a hinge creaks, a window unlatches,
a small internal weather system clears.
And in that quiet, salt-stained settling,
I recognize the truth—that without this slow purging,
this tidal washing of old bruises,
neither heart nor mind would’ve steadied enough
to let me write this poem as a treasured thank you.