i’ve been out of my mind lately. it comes in waves, i think
(in waves i think, in oceans, in drowing, i dream of drowning in wakes, funeral processions stacked atop of each other, held aloft by dirt and flowers and crabgrass)
there so much talking instead, so much body language and the wearing down of the body. sometimes you have to dance without a tune to figure out it’s rhythm. i’ve always been guileless, i’ve always been two left feet.
blitz said i had a habit of putting together incredibly complex things and then going backwards to figure out the simple stuff they were made up of. as if, why did i even bother. i miss him. i miss being a writer-in-becoming, artist-at-large.
now i’m just large. i’ve grown ridiculous. l’ve grown lazy. i’m just not hungry anymore. this is not the life i imagined, not the life i wished for. and it’s become this steamroller of a thing, perpetual motion machine, bringing me into this life i never thought i would allow myself to succumb to.
but then my daughter comes to me, still early in the morning after i’ve just gotten home from the night before, and she tugs at my fingers, pushes the hair out of my eyes and looks for my face. she pokes her fingers around there, finds my eyes to wake me up. and even though i can’t even keep my eyes open, i want nothing more than this, half dead from lack of sleep, flipping between day and night and night for day, nothing more than more she poking for my attention.
or when my wife has this look on her face that’s only for me, when her faces juts and curves like classic sculpture, something permanent and something permanent for me and only me, and i become her bear and we touch and it’s like water along stone, every fissure, every crack, every crevice bridged, covered, healed.
if only we could split ourselves, divide out across time, across each fork in the path, to have it all, every outcome, every possibility, every lost love, every lost child, every lost utterance, all at once, at all times, to live, to live, to be a pertpetual motion machine instead of being trapped by one.