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Every Good Thing by Annie Anzalone


Photo by Jacob Owens



Every good thing


I think I’m not the first to tell you

we experience time as a thing

moving forward, when really,

everything is happening at once.


I picture someone dying

alone in an ICU, on a vent,

her family unable to visit.

But she’s with them now, healthy,


on a regular old Saturday,

eating warm bread. No,

not in heaven, in the past,

which is now, so don’t worry,


because we’re going there.

We’re already there.

I drive the kids home from daycare

through the snow. A heavy November sky


makes 5pm into nighttime.

My mom lives blocks away.

I can’t get near her.

But can’t you see it? I’m a kid


in her kitchen, eating a sneak peek

of Thanksgiving stuffing from a small

blue bowl, the air full of onions and butter

and thyme. I’ll always be there.


Sometimes, it’s easy to see

that truth of everything

in waves of goods and bads,

hards and easies. I can relax


as the crest of one melts into the trough

of another just to rush back up, up, up.

No need to worry that now,

there will only be troughs,


because when is now, anyway?

Every good thing is happening now,

even though none of it is,

so don’t worry.


The Author


Annie Anzalone is a speech therapist for Denver Public Schools by day, and a poet by night. She has a Bachelor’s in Music and French, and a Master’s in Communication Disorders. She writes about her work in a large public school system, the experience of being a parent to young children, and her observations as a human in the world




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