To plant yourself between
what you are leaving behind
and a new path

is to hold yourself up
as if on crutches
you feel you should not need

but which have somehow
gradually become lodged

under your arms
without you noticing
the process.

Their presence to you
insinuates that
you are edging

toward a failure
of some sort,
mundane or

spectacular,
likely imminent,
possibly inevitable.

You are the between
times. Between
epochs, perhaps.

Crutches
have no roots.
Custom says you

will be moving soon
in one direction or
the other. But

you could defy that.
You could rise.
You could pass into

the earth below.
You could hold your breath
until you expire and vanish.

Or you could
hold fast to where you are
and see what comes to you

there. It doesn’t matter
to the earth if you waver
from side to side,

after all. What’s one more
indecision to the path
of Time, after all?

You’ve been this way
all your life, all through
Time. If you don’t

survive, if you don’t
thrive, it will not matter
to Time. Throw

those crutches down,
then. See what happens.
Nothing binary, perhaps.

Nothing that requires more of you
than waiting and accepting
whatever comes from that.