Losing myself in a field of graying burlap flecked with glowing screens
And the sound of fingers clacking like a thousand jabs in a featherweight bout
Dropped me down
From some old memory;
A fading dream of something
Else where I knew how to breathe
And the sun set slowly
Enough to see all its colors.
No one was taking pictures.

Looking at watches, computers, even donuts
And feeling fine.
Guilt forgotten
Like so many other things I don’t know why
I remembered in the first place.

A thousand things make me smile.
I am unsurprised but unentitled.

I start to dial my phone
But smash it on the ground,
Then turn and run some way I never knew
Sprinting and jogging, but not
Furious, or spiteful, or ashamed.
No complication or destination guiding my strides.

I just guide myself to a voice
I hope to never hear through a telephone again,
But only next to me
As I roll out of uninterrupted sleep,
Amazed that I was not the first to wake.

I laugh without walls, restrictions, or censorship,
Then collapse asleep again,
Reveling in my newfound power.

I wake up whenever
I cook and eat
As simple as that
No numbers, or pains, or seething shame
Just the savoring of coffee steam and buttered bread;
The pride of feeling full.

I step out onto some ledge where I see the ocean
And smell it
And could touch it if I wanted to

As if to break apart the swirling salt air,
I yell
With no subtext
Or direction,
No ceiling or floor, anger or doubt,
Just a pure burst of volume
To hear the echo telling me I’m alive.

A life
Chopped clean of all the measures, walls, and shadows I ever built.
I destroy a life’s work
And am overjoyed.