lose something every day

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

{ One Art || Elizabeth Bishop }

i hate that poem.
and i love it.

and after some of the loss i've felt in the past year, it almost shocks me that i could be so upset about something that seems so small in comparison . . . but. i think i've lost my favorite ring.


it's a beautiful green-blue amazonite, it's a parallelogram. it shields the my left ring finger from where the finger meets the hand to the first knuckle. it's something beautiful i bought for myself in a time of shadow, and it has brought me light.

and i don't know where it is.

i've looked everywhere; i've called restaurants; i've frantically emailed friends whose houses i've gone to; i've retraced my steps; i've spent hours trying to remember the last time i concretely remember having it on my hand. you don't understand. i never took this ring off, except if i was at home. and if i took it off at home, it went straight into my jewelry dish. and it's not there. and no one has seen it. and if it's not any of those places (and if i never take my rings off in public) i don't know where it could be. and the circular nature of this kind of retracing is wearing a groove in my brain, but i just can't stop. i'm beside myself.

part of me is just waiting to find it sitting on my dresser and feel utterly idiotic for having torn apart my room and any clothing i own with pockets for the past week. the other part of me is whispering all snakelike in my ear: you'll never find it. you lost it, stupid girl. now someone else is going to wear it. too bad.

and whether it's loss like this (the silly, simple, but strangely symbolic kind) or loss like that (the truly serious and paralyzing kind), i'm just not sure what lesson i'm supposed to learn from losing things, or people, or health, or love. well, i think i DO know the lessons we're meant to learn from having something unexpectedly ripped away and the subsequent searching and grieving and (one day) accepting, but it kills me that we have to go through this kind of absence for any reason.

i don't know what else to say. i'm almost ashamed for being so disheartened about the loss of a small, inanimate object. but part of me thinks that once you've lost something big (or something you never thought you'd have to lose), even the small things cut into that old wound. and it hurts. and the frenzy to find it, to put things back the way they were before, consumes us.

here's hoping we can hang on
and find in peace
what we truly need

{ s i g h }
she.