Z, yes, I’ll start with z because I’m left handed and this left to right, top to bottom world leaves smudges on my hands, papers, clothing.

Z is for zebrafish. Those little prisoners wearing their stripes in my childhood aquarium. I would break open all the zoos if I could. It seems like it’s the zeitgeist for that anyway.

Y, yielding and youthful and the depths of yearning I get when I realize that each day, I yield my youth. When do I look in the mirror and say, “yes”?

X starts xenophobia and xanthum and xylitol, all things I wish I didn’t have to know about.

While W, for all those withdrawn, weary, and worthless. Perhaps, it’s also for we, if there is such a thing.

V is for the venerable and vulnerable, the vixens and the victims. I now realize I am all of those things. So are you.

U is for how much I take umbrage at the unconsciousness I see and how I wonder if I’m the only one with this much unrelenting rage, if we are finally in our undoing, the earth’s ultimatum.

T because it is all too much.

S is for the Samaritans who are doing away with the superficial and sacrosanct.

R is the rampant, ramshackle rampage I see all around me. Today I don’t feel like there’s much to rave about, no rationale or retort.

Q is for the quorum of quail scattering in the grass that quivers and the quilts collected, thumb over quiet stitch.

P is for pace, paradigm, and panacea. The last of which does not exist.

O. An omen. An ovation. An “Oh my.”

N is for the nefarious and negative narratives that are spun, as we sink further into this nadir.

M. The meaning in the margin. The memento. The mandarin orange slice that takes me to that moment.

L. I wish it was for love. Maybe it’s like. Or possibly a labyrinth. But it’s liable to be a laceration, a lacuna.

K. The recollection of that kaleidoscope kite, soaring in the Berkeley marina.

J is when today, I cannot stop thinking about judges, jurisprudence, judiciousness, justifiable, and jeopardy.

I, of course, is idealist. I long to be more impervious as I sit here irate at the incessant infringement.

H is for how. How did we get here.

G. The good gospel, laying the groundwork, grace. The golden and gold-tinged autumn leaves. The glockenspiel from Germany, given to my grandmother’s great grandbabies. Gently gathering gooseberries in Sweden’s countryside.

F. For when I wonder if we have arrived in a fait accompli.

E is the elegance I seek, an elixir and an escape. And then I find myself instead sitting in the middle of an ellipsis.

D when I want to become a denizen of deceleration, to disconnect to deepen.  

C is for the coalitions and coherence I crave, coalescing together in the circle.

B is for benign, what I wish that tumor actually was.

And A is for ampersand and “and,” because there has to be more than, an addition and addendum, for which I anxiously await.

inspired by Amanda Lear’s Alphabet