The Complaint Experiment

Try to go twenty-four hours without

uttering a single word of complaint,

a lifetime's worth of grievances held

in abeyance, swollen like a balloon

dangling above a child’s unsteady hand,

dreaded mumblings about traffic jams

or bruised fruit, the inexorable aging

of knees. Even clouds look less thrilling

when catalogued, their imperfect shapes

stacked in wistful comparison, or sighs

uttered about coffee’s bitterness, gone

now in the silence, every passing second

a tiny chisel shaping the conversation’s

sculpture anew, chiseling away the grime,

the complaints rubbing relationships raw.

Pause to see us unfurl like pages pulled 

gently open in a book just waiting to

be read, devoid of complaint's scribbles

in the margins, each stanza standing 

on its own, unadulterated and free.