What matters most is how well
you walk through the fire.
—Charles Bukowski
The whole world may be burning
around you,
but you have knowingly
chosen this.
You must confront the blizzard
with a tattered umbrella.
These are the rules.
You must stop the gaping
head wound
with only a tiny circular band aid.
You do not have more
and you cannot do less.
This is the choice you make:
to wash it with your tears,
wring it out,
and begin again.
Eventually it may stick.
The role you take
is only as a guide.
Your patient is the one
who struggles each day
through the snow and the wind
but for the band aid,
naked.