When I was a girl,
there were things I wanted.

Now that I'm more woman than girl,
there are things I'm grateful for.

I have been upset with life, untrusting of its struggles
consuming marketing had concerned me
with what I owed

myself to improve
through purchase, pain, and penance.

We hoped, I think we all did,
for the promised land --

joyful experiences purchasable
plentiful and easy
and

unmarked
by struggle's
satisfactions and scars.

Sweet pleasure topped the list
of items most often sold
(losses left to unfold).

Was it Buddha who said
it was critical to understand
that life involved suffering?

Perhaps suffering
yields something important,
something critical, something

 irreplaceable in human experience. 

Perhaps,
in the clamor to name and define
claim and retain and control,

(and bind say we, the great universe
into our books so small,
our series of important agreements)

we have missed
the gift

beneath
the wrapping.

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