HANDLE WITH CARE
Originally published in Dunes Review, issue 29.2. (December 2025)
Do not seize the day. It does not like to be seized. It is not a bouquet or a naughty child. It is a damp-mouthed thing, pacing behind the chicken wire of your intentions. The day startles easily. A loud hope will make it flatten its ears, bristle its clocks, bark back the sun from your windowsill. You must not reach for it too abruptly. Let the day come to you like a feral thing—rain-boned, mistrusting, covered in dewy light. Keep your movements vague. Speak in lowercase. Some mornings, the day sniffs your hand. You call this progress. It may allow a slow brushing of your knuckles against its flank. The fur is soft here. You remember your mother’s kitchen towel—damp with lemon, too kind for the mess it endured. But if the day stiffens, if it bares its heat or lurches sideways with that sudden flame of unfinished grieving—you must not chase it. You are not owed its softness. Let it slink back into the treeline of chipped plates, half-written emails. Trust softness to find you like relics find ruin: late, deliberate, on the cliffside of collapse. There is no shame in retreat. The bedspread is still warm. You may return to it like a widow to the sea. Some days are not meant to be touched. They bruise easily. They bloom best along the periphery—watch them shimmer at the edge of your stillness, a kind of grace that arrives only when you stop demanding it.
This poem explores the delicate negotiation between ourselves and each day—how some mornings demand patience, quiet care, and self-forgiveness rather than force. It treats each day as a living, wary presence, capable of both softness and sudden resistance, and reminds us not to measure our worth by productivity. At its heart, it’s about noticing the subtle, often overlooked moments of grace that appear when we stop trying to control everything. Be gentle with yourselves <3