(Dis)trust

Brush fire in the veins. And the heart 
curled in on itself.

--Joy Manesiotis



It seems everyone distrusts the news, the medical world, their particular government. Family even. It started with forced lockdowns, with a lack of choice and so much misleading information. What remains is the lingering question: Who do I trust? 

My way of dealing with the confusion and disappointment was to stop watching the news. No X, no streaming national or local news unless the weather turned ugly. My husband died and nothing felt real anyway, so why listen to manipulated information? The one person I bounced ideas off of, discussed everything with, was gone. 

After 18 months, it may sound fanciful, but I trust literature. I trust poetry. I trust the poets,  still in their PJs, hunkering over their words, coffee gone cold while turning an ephemeral thought into a cohesive line.

A friend gifted me with a book of poems: Revoke by Joy Manesiotis. The hard delicacy of the poems was disconcerting, taking me out of my ennui, reminding me that communication is often subliminal. My friend somehow knew that I was ready to read and assimilate poetry again.

In our craft we often hide our tenderest underbellies. Poets are experts at cloaking. What if we dropped the subterfuge and allowed for vulnerability, the not knowing that terrifies us? What if we admit that not only are things not going well, they might not go well tomorrow? We cannot wait for the upswing. Quite possibly we are the upswing.
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Touch the white heat of fire. Write it down. Share it.

Colette
September, 2025 

 




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https://www.joymanesiotis.com/