colliding with circumstances

 the beginner

Because in the morning, you collide with a new set of circumstances
which may or may not fix the ones that closed your last day.
Because while you were sleeping, your body replenished its cells,
including the ones you were hoping would be gone by the time you woke.
Because the weather is unpredictable, despite your best efforts at shelter,
and because you have an uncanny ability to unremember the mud puddle
you’d already stepped in, and your feet gravitate again toward the mess of it.
Your innocence is a constant interruption. You are always returning to the back
of the line somewhere, your tail between your legs. But that’s the gift of the beginner.
How the muscle pushing back the world can’t stop itself from getting thinner.  

maya stein