Close to the surface so you can find it again

Keep some joy close to the surface so you can find it ever again. Don’t let it sink. Don’t let the handle rust, the crumb lose definition in that swell of bad news. Don’t nestle it in barbs, in fishnchips newspaper neglected so long the smell is neutral. Don’t attend to that and not this. This will bury itself a little deeper with every mudslide. Unattended, it will petrify, camouflaged the color of stuck, or evaporate over weeks without even a lick of steam. The planet is troubled. Douse the fire, debride the wound, use your ice cube trays to rebuild what you can of the glaciers, and keep joy available by searching for it now and then. Practice so you remember how to find it, where to even look.

Image credit: "Cobbler's tools, Deerfield, Mass.," The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, New York Public Library Digital Collections 1860 - 1920.