Poetry by Robin Chadwell

Is it enlightenment or mental illness?

There is no language to describe the direction of my fleeing - so I say to 

you, 

I’m heading toward the space between being alive and understanding 

aliveness, and my stomach aches and the voices are coming back. 

I hope that gives you some idea of where I’m going. Up, toward my sky 

companion, and not in the bullshit kind of way. My eyes are quick to 

tear. 

This so-called English can die for all I care. 

Solubility 

So much chatter about changing the world like it’s something separate 

from the pit in my stomach, 

or the butterflies. I am as much milkweed as anything else. Because I 

know this, my eyes are wet most of the time. 

I can’t keep the salt of a good cry to season my next meal


and the point of wet eyes is not the pursuit of innocence—my cruelty 

grows still: 

Between my ribs, breathing, labored, like a baby born too soon. 

Robin Chadwell (she/her) is a farmer, activist, and poet living in the Berkshire hills of so-called Massachusetts. Her writing has been published by the Hyacinth Review, the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Same Faces Collective, among others. She humbly asks all who read her work to consider donating what they can to evacuate Aya Al Ghazzawi and her family from the Gaza strip.