my mother believes that every thing comes
from some thing else, in an end
less succession of being:
people out of people, feeling out of
feeling.

she tells me this in the car
on the way to some where.

& she can't tell, but i am thinking
of a woman

i am thinking of a child

i am thinking of how i feel
between being-- between definites.
how i am neither one thing
or the other, always.

i want to ask her
what i am coming out of,
what i am going in to

not because i think she'll know
but instead
because may be it'll get her to stop
talking about the change
in the glove box, her grandmother,
the depression.

i want to ask her question upon question
about what she thinks of bodies
piled in a ditch. i want to ask her
what she thinks about eyes & movement
& the cascade of people in transit.
i want to ask her how airports affect her & why

because i think it might get us to stop talking
& start reaching in to
the wooden barrels, wetting our elbows
by morning light. she doesn't know, but

i am thinking of the space between loves &
how it tightens the skin around our hipbones
& how i never told you
any thing. how i never made it seem important

that i didn't believe in important,
or true, or bad because i knew you
some how
beneath the water,
& knew

you

believed in believing; in words &
in reason,

& so you would know
that by not believing in truth,
i would not believe in you.
that by not believing in bad,
i would not have the strength
to conjure up sympathy

& so you would know
that by not believing in important,
i would make you
equal to every
thing

around you & to every
thing around me.

i would make you
come & go with pebbles in your hand
like all of the other sound, or soundless
realities.

i tell my mother
about the way i can see things
forming in my flesh,
i think they are children
of sorts & so i name them.
i point, & tell her of how
i loved you

once

a long time ago
& i write you letters still
but i send them to people
who are not you.

she understands my struggle,
but i do not.

where am i
in this recycling of existence.
at what point will it be
that i begin to see things
as suitably regular, as a simplicity
of successive selves.

i ask her
if she is happy
looking out from where she is
& seeing every one
moving out of who they are
in to who they will become,

if she feels completed
by the rocks in the driveway,
by glacial lakes & rising water levels.
she says
that no thing is permanent

& she clutches the steering wheel.

i think,
watch out.
some thing
is coming that will knock you
to the ground.

i look towards the out side now. i
see the buildings pass us by,
how all of the windows distort me
in a way that is altogether tender.

i try not to see what is.
i try not to think of things
or you
as constant,
or singular.

i tell my self that
i am looking at you
through my self & i can
picture you/ beyond me now.
you are looking out to the wind
at the corner, seeing
the sun light come through
the brackets of the clouds.

you are watching the light change hands,
making some life & some death.
you are thinking of it as mechanical.
you are thinking of it as routine.
you are listening for some thing that you cannot hear.

09/23/2001

Posted on 09/23/2001
Copyright © 2024 Marina Dawn