The veil concealing truth gets windswept in the wee hours, revealing all to the silence of the night.
—Terri Guillemets
infj
Selves
A philosopher lives in your mind,
a lover in your heart,
an alchemist in your soul.
—Terri Guillemets
Blaring quiet
A clock is ticking
in my living room —
I never even noticed
that it makes noise —
my mind is ticking,
my heart is ticking.
Everything quiet
is audible at 3 a.m.
—Terri Guillemets
Mind own secrets
Frustration is nothing more than letting your own mind bully you.
—Terri Guillemets
Internal listening
If you can’t get quiet enough to hear yourself, your life is too loud.
—Terri Guillemets
Everywhichway
Sometimes I feel like I’m going nowhere, in opposite directions.
—Terri Guillemets
Ever finding
Always remember lost, so that you don’t take for granted found.
—Terri Guillemets
Pierced flight
thorns and stings
and those such things
just make stronger
our angel wings
—Terri Guillemets
P.S. Thank you to everyone who has written letting me know that Katya Elise Henry got a tattoo of this poem. Honestly, I didn’t know who she was and had to look it up. But that’s pretty cool, and a nice tattoo.
Inching along, leaving behind
the poet is a sensitive snail —
wandering along the path of life
leaving a glittering trail of words
—Terri Guillemets
The chaos-harmony of life
I swing like a kid
and fall like an adult;
cry tears of gratitude
and pray in smiles;
hug and love, and later
hide under the covers—
wildly and humbly living
from dawn to the stars,
and ever back again
—Terri Guillemets
Weary
“When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.”
—Antonio Porchia (1886–1968), Voces, 1943–1966, translated from the Spanish by W. S. Merwin (1927–2019), 1968
Chasing the past
Chasing the past, I stumbled into the future.
—Terri Guillemets
P.S. Thanks so much to Rebecca for letting me know that this quote was used in the television show Being Erica. In the episode “Plenty of Fish,”
INFj autopsy
the autopsy will find —
coloured flowers in my grey matter
still-beating poetry in my heart
unspent ink in every organ
blood saturated with love
bones mineral’d by life’s rough days
muscles fiber’d by courage and fear intertwined
and a slightly crushed but glittering soul
—Terri Guillemets