Just when I think the poetry has dried up, and all I’ve left in my forlorn life is a trudging forward, just then I’m up in the night with flowers bursting from my chest. No soil beneath my rib cage and no sunlight in my room, but nevertheless here are these flowers brightening my midnight life and making smile a face that hasn’t in a while.

God, life is good and everything is alright, I tell myself. You just have to go through the bad times, I guess. Necessary lows for the highs. And as I’ve gotten older I get better at remembering this. A paradox where I can still enjoy the high knowing there will be a low coming, and paying my dues in the lows without hoping too much for the highs.

It’s only sometimes when I’m like a kid again and I get so silly high that I forget about anything and blow so much hot air into my own ballon that when I’ve run out of breath the fall back to earth has a hard crash landing. And when I meteor here, my impact drives me so deep that at first I know it is temporary but at some point so far beneath the surface I start to wonder whether I’ll ever rise again. So much time in the dark, cold cavern, and deeper, darker all the while, I can’t really help it. But boy, when I’m high up there, I don’t know if I’d change it for the world.