To be awake,
to be blind,
I’ve never understood the difference.

On a parkbench,
on a streetcorner,
silent, idle, waiting

for sadness, or the lack of it,
waiting
for the excess of it;

to be awake, to not know
is there a difference?
In the water,
submerged
floating, sinking, drowning

in sadness, or the lack of it,
smothered
by the excess of it;

When I awake, I am blind,
When I awake, I do not know,
When I wait for the bus,
on the street corner,
I am blind.
When I am sinking, baptized, or drowning,
I am dumb.

I am always
drowning in sadness, or the absence of it.
I am always
drowning in sadness, or the excess of it.
I am always floating
in the not knowing,
always smothered
by the dumbness of it all.

Do you feel the same? Choked to death
by melancholy?
Does some thick smoke cloud up
your lungs?
Is it the melancholy? Is it the
sadness?