SITTING DUCK

Originally published in The Listening Eye. (November 2025)

A bright orange sunset with the silhouette of a forest in the background, and a river with swimming geese in the foreground.

      there is only so much life a body can take before it overflows—
even more so when fatigue guzzles you dry, thirsty for more space.

      space like a whirlpool, immeasurable as weakened muscles.
      on the worst days, tugged underwater by flooding tiredness,

you burst inwardly like a dam. mocked by the pep-talking noonday
sunlight that protests in productive brightness, you confide in dusk:

      muted, no timelines—or checklist—or uncrossable bridges.
      cradled at your own pace, you are rejuvenated at night. but

everything retreats towards sunrise—even the low-hanging moon,
forgotten as a coin lodged in the throat of your couch, your regret.

      how the walls yawn like an egg mid-hatch, squeezing dim
      lamplight in a feat of physics not unlike your own waking.

akin to a duckling in your neediness, thin-winged, sorry vessel of
dependence. claim stillborn denials of tomorrow’s existence, flee

      the shame of not showing up. coward’s excuse, they shout, 
      satin-soft but not without fangs, maw of a beast. watching,

waiting as clocks keep ticking & you mimic a guilty stop-motion.
empathy: draping a blanket over your loved ones only for it to be

      shrugged off in their sleep. you do not have that luxury to
      remove the chronic shackle, leech devouring your energy.

how gently you learn to grasp hope—as if it were a creature that
could bite you, carry it like rainwater to snuff out every flare-up.

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This poem comes from living with a body that wears down faster than I can keep up with, from the kind of fatigue that stretches into every part of life. Simple things can feel like too much, and there’s a constant tension between what I want to do and what my muscles allow.

I wrote it to capture that experience: the shame of not “showing up” in ways the world expects, the exhaustion that feels invisible to others, and the quiet, careful strategies we invent to survive and keep going. At its heart, it’s about learning to move gently with myself, to cradle hope like something fragile, and to notice the small, undramatic miracles of endurance. It’s a reflection on how chronic limitation reshapes time, effort, and self-compassion—and on how, even in the face of constant fatigue, life can still carry moments of hope.