By Mia Lindenburg

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These pieces share an insight into the challenge of finding joy in the world after coming out of the strangeness of mental illness.

I don’t know I’m feeling it until I look back and recollect
Like the last cigarette you had before you were 
bum broke and begging strangers outside of bars, 
you didn’t know how good it tasted when you inhaled, 
it’s only the resonance of its tobacco memory that 
lingers on your tongue, lingers on your gums

Joy is when you remember how many stars you saw as a kid, 
and loss,
is just the same.

It’s mother’s arms wrapping you up 
before sending you off to school, 
that you wish you could feel right now,
thousands of miles away from home.

Yet joy is, too, found in the now. 
It is the simple still moment when you recognize a black-capped chickadee as it hops along the grass, and you feel proud to be able to remember a friend. 

It is the then, and the now, and the only thing it asks of you, is to be seen

Process

This poems primarily come from observations and reflections on life, not from prompts. However, these pieces were shared with many friends and mentors in order to develop them into the final versions that now stand. They were written in journals, in order to easily capture the moments of the day when they occurred, but later transcribed into a digital format. I learned that editing is perhaps the most powerful part of writing, but that poems emerge into creation when least expected, and a poet should always be prepared to write.