Poetry

It’s like reading a book with blank pages

The story you know but the words don’t come for ages

Rising out from the blank slate of your mind

And the depth of your heart between the spine of your life

They appear only subtly so

The words can form like a lotus being caressed by the sunlight

or

With the lividity of raw sewage and human plight

Setting quietly on the bed the children rustling

Crying and fighting, they roll into me like an avalanche

How to find the words to make myself full again.

How to string together the thoughts to make my heart not dead

“Set boundaries” the therapist says

How insightful

The only boundary I know

Is the one I put up between me and everyone else.

Where’s this going. An hour. Sixty minutes.

A lifetime of problems. Not simple nor innocuous.

The people sing, the children draw in coloring books in the church pews

The preacher smiles and opens a prayer for the whole country.

How pious.

All eyes close, no one speaks as the silence falls.

The children scribble. Is God in the church pews coloring?

Or is he standing eyes closed to the world?

Where’s this going. An hour and a half. Ninety Minutes.

An eternity of problems. Neither just brighter nor darker than before.

Where’s the lotus in this life I’ve written?

Where’s the caress of the sunlight as it blossoms?

Where’s this going. A lifetime. 28 years.

The pages fill, word by word, writing a story you never wanted to read

You turn the book to the cover, pensive you stare placidly at the wrong title.

Who am I?

-JM