Monthly Archives: March 2024

By Kara Salmanson

Dearest Chaos,

I sit here in the midst of you, my chaos.

You are mine, you belong to me.   

Clothes are stacked on each other, a shirt, a pair of jeans, a discarded bra the dog got ahold of; an underwire on one side, none on the other. 

Dishes stacked in the sink, a plate with two forks caressed in an X seeming to say, “STOP”, stop you dear chaos. 

Wet laundry languishing in the wash to be washed again another day. 

You, you are my chaos, and I own you.  

I’ve tried to purge you, but alas dear chaos you just seem to beget more chaos, like a splitting atom, particles flying to perpetuate new chaos.

So, I no longer struggle with the fantasy that I can make you disappear. 

I have accepted you, I befriended you, I embraced you.  

You are my chaos, a part of me, a part of who I am, you have always been there.

I have stopped making excuses for you.  

If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t be me.  

I don’t thrive on you, but maybe you thrive on me.

I know you’re not going anywhere and neither I am.  

I can’t leave you behind dearest chaos, you travel with me.  

You frustrate me, you often define me, you make me laugh.  

I’d like to say that you shock me, but you never do.  

You are my chaos, I know you, I birthed you, you don’t shock me.

What would I do if I wasn’t surrounded by you?  

What would I do if you didn’t creep into my thoughts, my dreams, the deepest recesses of my mind, to lay dormant until the most important of task must be done.  

What would I do if you weren’t my closet friend, nemesis, confidant, when all I would know to expect was the expected.  

Would I feel as if I were missing an arm, a leg a heart. 

Would the waters of my soul be calm instead of frantic, cleansing instead of abrasive?  

Chaos, you must be my true love, my one and only, my soul mate; for people come and go, but you remain. 

You, you are my chaos.

I birthed you; I own you.