I Have

I have a peach on the table.

I have a hat sitting on a rack.

I have a spoon buried in my bag of chips.

I have a roll of tissue to help me through the day.

I have a pair of hands my mother desires.

I have a mind that my father wanted.

I have the flaws that my imaginary sister will never have.

I have legs that do not want to run on the streets.

I have the fears that my make-believe brother does not fear.

I have a candle sinking in a bowl of water.

I have a penguin that does not waddle.

I have a circle with no center, like a doughnut with no filling.

I have a pair of jeans that cannot be worn.

I have skin too tan to see the sun.

I have a snail that is burning from the salt.

I have a stone waiting for the waves,

waiting for the waves to tear its parts away and to lose them in the violent seas.

I have a pile of money buried underground.

I have road signs placed on every corner.

I have a list of people I’m dying to meet.

I have a rocket ready to fly into space.

I have

nothing.

~ February 6, 2010

Standing in the Center

So cold. So frozen.
Where am I?

So far. So distant.
What is this that I see?

So continuous. So still.
How can this be?

The one punished for looking back,
The one reprimanded for thinking forward,
The one imprisoned for being in the present.

When has it become this way?
Why? How? Where?
What?

I cannot seem to remember. I cannot seem to recall.

Perhaps from the moment that light was declared, this was the way
that it had always been.

What’s the difference?

What’s the matter?

How is it that there can be no movement and no sound,
not even the slightest trickle of the night’s rain?

So calm? So quiet? So at peace?

Is that how it is now?
Is this what it is like?

A simple stone on the edge of the cliff with no sense of
fear, shame, sadness, or anything?

What is that? over there. look? will you please?

I turn back to the cliff to reach down and pick up the small round marble,
this tiny fragment of the Earth, and
I throw it far across the ocean.

What is this?

Carefree? Lightened? Free?

I turn away from the scene and look at the empty space ahead of me.

Water in a jar.
Air in a balloon.

A reflection in the mirror.


The crystallization of nothing.

~ March 23, 2010