Kerfe Roig

Just make it simple, I tell myself.
A few black lines, a white-shadowed structure.

A ladder of black lines leading into white shadows.
If there’s a way down, there’s a way up.

Up and down are not the only dimensions.
Infinity is full of expansive emptiness.

Emptiness can expand, saturate every illusion.
I want to become a navigator of clarity.

I want to sail on a sea of clarity without illusion.
I want to extend myself beyond artificial boundaries.

I want to discard my self-imposed boundaries.
Now or never, I think, but I’ve always chosen never.

As Nick Cave said, it’s late but it ain’t never.
Just make it simple, I tell myself.

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Silver Birch Press, Feral, Pure Haiku, Zen Space, Visual Verse, Collaborature, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, The Raw Art Review, The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations on her blogs, methodtwomadness.wordpress.com (which she does with her friend Nina) and kblog.blog.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.