My palate makes the switch from heavy hops to rooibos, ignoring
The powerlines and harmonies and busy highways.
There’s a chill in my bones upon discovering something beautiful:
Someone who can play the piano,
The disconnectedness from self I learn to love,
The gradual erasure of self
Into
Silence
Apart from the occasional clever word and smug smile.
As love spills towards me like a waterfall from the mountain,
I solemnly realize that I have a problem and the bitter-
Sweet voice replies “So do we all.”
I trust and love that voice more than everything:
More than the wallpaper that has guided my trip up the stairs for years,
More than the cigarette-smoke smelling basement,
More than the front yard that tastes like pine sap and motor oil.
I take to the neighborhood the same way
A shark takes to the taste of blood.
I could write for ages about that basement and the spaces of it I never walked
The corners I only gazed at as if they were the darkest depths of the human soul
And never touched --
Because they felt like ghosts upon my skin,
Because the television cast a glow on them that told me to avoid them.
It lives in my sternum, like the pill which sticks in my intestines
And eats away at the tender membranes til they burst.