(in the aftermath of tepid soup)

It wasn’t the soup at all.
It was the opportunity
(missed that time)
to reassess my disappointment
and what I swallowed
by accepting
that what I needed for my comfort
was heat,
and then in thinking,
when I couldn’t get it,
that all there was for me to do
was settle

It wasn’t that I should have found
some perfect way to ask again —
this was a portal
(missed that time)
to seeing things in terms of life
instead of soup,
being supported by
(thus bearing witness to)
the ever present river
comforting us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2019