The Smallest Rebellion I Know

A poem for when you’ve been holding it all together for too long.

I kept trying to save everyone (and I still do sometimes).

Not in some grand, heroic way , just in the quiet, exhausting way of answering one more message, saying “yes” to one more ask, holding one more thing that was never mine to hold.

But I’ve grown tired of pretending I’m the soil and the sun and the rain.
I’m just one root, trying to stay alive, to stay connected.

What could it look like to help others just short of self-harm?

Lately I’ve been practicing the smallest rebellion I know:
setting something down before it breaks me.
Letting the wind do what it knows how to do.

This poem came from that place, the place between surrender and relief.
May we finally stop hauling the whole mountain,
and remember we’re part of it instead.

Photo by Natalia Blauth

Root Amoung Roots

I tried to carry the mountain in my two trembling hands,
but the mountain laughed,
its echo a kind of mercy,
and said, “You are not my keeper.”

I tried to hold the sky,
to catch all its storms before they broke above you.
But the sky is an untamed witness,
too alive to be managed.

And when I hoard all the doing,
others forget their hands.
Their muscles sleep.
Their knowing dulls into polite retreat.

I mean to help,
but help that never rests becomes a thief:
it steals the feral astonishment
of discovering their own strength.

So this is my offering:
a branch of light where I rest my elbow,
a leaf I let go so wind may carry it.

I soften.
I stop holding and hauling.
I learn to be root among roots,
not root for all things.

May what I release return
in rain, in shade,
in a neighbor’s open hand.

I keep thinking about how much energy it takes to keep every fire burning.
What if we just… didn’t?
Stop tending every fire. Let one go out on purpose.
You and me, let’s see what grows in the dark.

Not everything worth keeping needs our managing.
Some things only root when they’re left alone.

So if you needed someone to say it, this is me saying it:
There is no “rest fairy” that will save us. You/we must claim the rest needed to lead ourselves and others well. -Karlee