When I finally step outside my door,

I look up to the sky to see if the clouds lower;

To the ground to see if the ground dampens;

At the wall to see if the moths remain;

At the street to see if the deer travel.

All of these carry weight and fill together one plate of the scale.

Countering these and in the opposite bowl

Are my very particular concerns.

How is the pain that hinders motion;

The sight that diminishes usual activity;

The fog that hazes across thinking;

The mood that renders much complex?

I hang each from the fulcrum of awareness,

Carefully considering their changing measure.

This is what I can do this day.

With acknowledgement that the poise is ever shifting,

I go about my quotidian existence.

They crossed their arms and leaned back in the chair.

Oh, you don’t like the usage of THEY? The plurality of this stymies you

By throwing down a new concept? Once I would have tried to explain.

Now I realize that because of living among you (singular),

You (singular), you (singular), you (singular), and all the other damn yous,

I AM not one, but many:

I who have always known and said, “I am here!”;

She who others insist be “girled; ladyed; womaned; ma’amed”;

He who some did occasionally call out, often to tell him to leave;

It who got teased, bullied, beaten, and bloodied.

These all live here within me, a forced communal being.

No more apologies. I’m tired of being patient and understanding.

THEY/THEIR/THEM.

He unwound his heart, thread by strangled red thread.

Having searched in vain for a suitable synonym,

He muttered, “What a mess,” and left,

Punctuating his disdain with a bang of the door.

The discarded fibers quivered and with enormous effort

Strove to remake themselves once more.

Without a purpose, without a suitable descriptive term,

They found no word to give them cause.

Hopelessly they stilled and let flow brief bitter tears before they died.

The color leached from them, and all that remained

Turned brittle and dusty with time and loss.

Years passed, and the housekeeper hummed a popular love song

As she swept the floor and emptied the dustpan into the bin.

All for want of a good thesaurus. Sing alas, alas, alackaday.