Don’t think this journey to joy is going to be taken lightly or that it will be refreshing, like an Indian summer breeze whipping across a field of tall yellowing grass
or flowers delivered by surprise with a vague note and a hint of something grand.
But the journey of joy is
a poured-out widow reaching for her coffee after finishing her third cup.
Red eyed and sore from a promising pilgrimage that resembles
worn down perseverance
and useless flattery
and consequence
and lostness
and losing.
Joy awakens from suppression-
Emerging from a chronic sick feeling that causes the aches of the bones and muscles to draw forth in salient dissonance.
Even in the grandeur of being a chosen daughter of the King, she sips her coffee and stares blankly into the violet sky wishing she knew the secret to attain joy.
All the while, in its famously unbeknownst fashion, joy’s seed was planted in the melodious dirge.
Sprouting through the fertilizer that seemed to have extinguished it.
Joy comes inconveniently on time.