I will tell you this: you need to stop thinking I am like you. I need to stop too, so I have stopped.
I have always been different, from the very earliest days. Different things were important to me. Invisible things. Nameless things. The taste of wind, the sound of grass.
This is how I get lost, trying to meet you in your world. Trying to speak your tongue.
I will tell you this: I pause on the corner to watch the light thicken. I pause at the end of the day, take stock of the sky, the puffs and lines, the marbled colors growing dim.
I stop and listen to geese; watch pelicans plunge, skim, swoon; squeeze agave blades between my fingers.
I feel the scuff and grate of shoes on concrete, the drag of pebbles and detritus, the fallen bits of bark, loose dirt. I feel the shoosh-shoosh of shoes on wet grass, the cool prick of dew jumping up to meet skin.
In the air I taste salt, sulfur, snowflakes, ash. I taste rain, exhaust, birds, clouds. I taste jungles, ferns, monkeys. I taste glaciers, caribou, the northern lights.
Can you map the contour of infinity? Explain numbers? Comprehend planets?
I will tell you this: we only imagine ourselves. We are the snake that swallows its tail, the beginning and the end. We are the phoenix going up in flames, the end and the beginning.
We are lunch. We are a conflagration. Whoosh.
|