Operating under
Illusory
Neon lights
I thought I was
Winning
The game
But the buzzer
Cries foul.
In the commercials
They laugh
It off.
It’s always
A joke.
It’s a bright world,
Theirs.
Always lit
And never empty.

But what happens
When the lights flicker?

Blustery, and teary-eyed,
we have hopes for this
little child.
We plan her life
with our eyes
and our words
cement reality
as it forms before us.
We have dreams
for this child
who
will be strong and beautiful
and fast and smart
and perfect.
She is the light of the morning.
She is the dawn.
She will over-come.
She will hide behind her father’s pant-leg,
stepping on his feet.
She will wear pig-tails.
She will let her mother
braid her hair.
She will confide.
She will tell you every day
the small details
of her day
and how much she loves you.
She will laugh, cry, cough
your dreams away
and eventually,
she will die.
She will meet the end
with the dignity and grace
of a woman-grown.
Or maybe,
she’ll just get shot.

I think
my father was born a giant
but somewhere along the line
he shrunk
to the size of a man.

Once,
like a pea,
he could hold me
in a single hand.

Rough,
and calloused.
They felt like sand.
Warm, and welcoming.

My father’s laugh
like the ocean
would roar and boom
and grow soft.

My father’s roar
like the storm
would rise and fall

with the fall of his hand.

I once was a pea.
I once was a seed.

I grew.

I grew and grew
and grew
until the tears
weren’t quite so ready
and my hands were rough
like sand
paper.

If only I could
smooth
out my life.

Every surface tread
with steady steps.
Every surface
would be even.

My thoughts
I could fit
in a neat, tidy
box.

File them away.
File him
away.

Though I imagine he would
Hate
the tight, muddy space
beneath the ground.

I imagine he would
hate
me more.

For now
the only sounds I hear,
blows I fear

are the ones that won’t fit in the file cabinet.

I hold in my hands
The beginning of a poem.
The beginning,
Or perhaps the very end of a loose string.
Eyeing me.
Asking me,
You,
Who sit behind the desk,
You.
Do you forever wish to maintain this?

Do you never wish
To sit below?
Above?
In front of?
Inside?

That’s stupid,
I say,
You can’t sit inside a desk.
It’d have to be industrial-
Sized.
And they don’t make those,
They don’t.

The string hasn’t moved.
It simply says-
‘I’m not joking.’

---

‘Do you wish to meet your heroes,
beggars, fools, enemies, lovers, and
every walk of human who walk
forever in the in-between?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you wish to know
life
and death
instantaneously,
contemporaneously,
with solemnity,
with contempt,
and know
every moment and feeling
inbetween?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shall know little else.’

‘Do you
wish to wish
wish to want
want to wish
and so on
and so forth?’
The string asks me tirelessly.

‘Simply put,
I am always wanting.
I am always at fault.
I am never wrong
But I am never right
Either.’

‘You know this
and little else.

Live both in
This world
And outside it.
View this place as it were never meant to be.
Like you,
It waiting to see
And be seen.

Like me,
It is a string.
It is nothing,
And yet to pull
Means everything

You have been summoned to task.
I have been left here to
Ask you:
Will you do it?’

The string has not moved
But my hands are shaking.

‘No,’
I say,
‘Yes.’