Poetry by Moira Saucer: When you fall
When you fall
most people fall away.
It’s human nature.
There you are
inconveniently
sick and poor.
You are trouble wrapped
in thrift store clothes,
a motley creature
with little possibility
for redemption.
i fell
from a great
height,
losing job, apartment,
everything.
i moved
from place to place,
hot, menopausal,
stiff and exhausted
from pain,
nowhere soft
to curl up
like any animal would
and mourn
the death of the woman
that was me.
Nothing
worked
out.
i was unmasked,
marked
as fallen.
The world judged me
harshly.
Felons at the group home
ransacked my bedroom,
stole my food,
accused me
of tax evasion.
The shaman
who read the Tarot cards
predicted five years
of suffering,
being unsettled,
humiliation
and a great humbling.
(like the Queen of Heaven
Ishtar in the underworld,
charged with hubris,
imprisoned, he said)
i survived the dark descent, the five years of shame, poverty and—and yes hell. There is no moral to this story. Fuck mythic suffering— avoid it if you can. Even the worst don't deserve trial and banishment from heaven's announcements, the warm rays of the sun.
