I own knotted paths, down which I practice walking alone.

Tonight, I find myself in a different state- companioned by an old friend.
An aged barrier: tall and sure-
A definer: my romanticized version of a dusty road on one side, and
the obsolete headstones of somewhere far from here, on the other.

My companion, my stone wall of separation, asks me to climb up on his back and
I am afraid… the breeze blows so coolly there.
I have gone before, lifted my convinced arms and pulled myself up
to the place of everything in-between.
The stillness of the stone against the movement of breath,
surrounds- binds.
It tastes me and I taste It.

I’m afraid to witness the humming honesty
(the way the world sounds when it is asleep)
I wary that the sight will lick upon my fear and fill my holes with
grays and shadow of what could be.
If only I would open my eyes.

Want sits next to me on that wall: an entity that I silence by letting it run me in circles.

Below me, on the ground, I used it to hurl myself onto the wall,
crouched in the shaded black below,
is Need, my quiet and lonely goddess, that asks “who am I?”

09/24/2003

Posted on 09/25/2003
Copyright © 2024 Gabrielle L Gervais