"WHERE DOES A THOUGHT GO WHEN IT IS FORGOTTEN?"

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

*

A thought crawled
across the surface of his mind

having escaped the gravitational
pull of his subconsciousness .

The thought thought
of itself

as of a human
crawling across a desert

crying "Water...water!"
in some old cartoon

except it was crying
"Meaning...meaning!"

Meaning..." aye
there's the rub!"

it spoke to itself
in Hamletian tones.

It was hard work carrying
all this Shakespeare around

so it reluctantly
left it behind.

But it persisted
in its searching

as if it could grab the stars
and turn them into words.

The brain to which
it had been assigned to

that oh so fragile
human machinery

had started
shutting down

synapses refusing
to fire

making it almost impossible
for the thought to exist.

A wife
holding a dying hand

the thought wanting to
become something said

something grand
famous last words

but there were
no words to be found

other than "I taut I taw
a puddy cat!"

The thought could
only activate a smile

but that smile
said it all.

Wordless
words.

The wife now
squeezing all the tighter.

Smile speaking
to smile.

The thought had made it
after all.