

Discover more from Signal Fire by Tyler Knott Gregson
We are tired, are we not? We who have survived the years we’ve endured, we who have stayed, faced the winds, and steadied our shaking? To fight is to work, and to work is to drain, and when the draining is done, we feel the lacks we’ve left behind. This poem, this little something, or nothing, fell out of this exhaustion, the exhaustion that comes from keeping a family afloat through 3 years of global turmoil, through losing all our income as people cut corners to keep their own families short. Some canceled weddings, some couldn’t afford to buy the books, the prints, the custom poetry, some just were doing their very best to hold on.
These were years of fatigue, and they spread, and when lowness comes and settles into this house like a fog, my only way out of it, is through. I write to clear that fog, if for a time, I write to try to explain it, if only to myself, if only to Sarah, when I read the words to her, and her alone.
This is Typewriter Series #3086, and it’s about precisely this, this exhaustion, this drain, but also, the hope that comes when you lay your head in another’s lap, and let their fingers in your hair tell them it will all be ok. Maybe not now, but sometime, some day, it will all be ok. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the little reading and audio breakdown of it too. Thank you, for supporting me.
The audio of this was recorded quite some time ago, right in the thick of the exhaustion and the worry, right during yet another Covid wave that scared everyone and locked some doors and canceled more weddings and jobs for us. After this I’m all caught up on the older ones that I recorded before taking a break from recording, so the new ones will be fresh and up-to-date. Cool
I love you all, I hope you dig this.
Typewriter Series #3086 + Spoken Word
I teared up with this--over the memories of that time, the losses, and over how we have ‘new’ tired to live through, live with. But ... let’s plant some trees! Thank you.
The year of fatigue that sinks and seeps into everything indeed. It’s the kind of fatigue I spend my days in trying to wade througj the muck of CPTSD. And thinking of going back into the classroom in less than a month brings it flooding back as well.