Suspended State
From sometime in February…
Occasionally when I am in the bathtub,
lying on my back
after breathing a five count triangle
I can enter into orbit around myself.
Or the something I like to call myself in conversation
regarding spirit/brain/body/hellfire.
There is a small white light that appears
occasionally.
Sometimes it is easier to refer to this myself
as purpose.
I see me engaged in an orbit around a purpose.
She is there
unclear whether I have any say.
Whether we have any say.
Occasionally this small white light is hidden
behind what can only be described as a
black hole because
I can see it when I close my eyes and
it is black
and spins
and the purpose that I call myself
becomes hidden and I worry
the small white light
got sucked in but so far only eclipsed.
Occasionally I forget
to look for her.
To look at her.
To allow the gravity of her to hold more importance
than the illusion of control.
There is a sensation of pushing
my entire body through opaque but very tangible mud.
The mud like three days after a large storm where the river has begun to clear but the bottom two feet below remains invisible.
Heavy and stronger than you.
Occasionally the gravitational pull becomes stronger than my stubborn urge to resist
and suddenly I am on top of a mountain
and in the future.
I am there down in the valley.
staring at the river and crying
mud boots on.
Soaking socks
walking upstream
and at once suspended
I am driving around this wet and brown and green valley
and cannot see where I am going.
But here on this mountain,
here in the future I can see
that path of the past
myself moving,
myself violently pushing,
impatiently dragging.
Me, the comet and the tail.
Me, tracing and retracing
damp steps and now I cannot tell if this urge is to turn away
or go to this person back there.
Down there.
All the dirt moving from beneath my feet to this passed
version fighting gravity and sleep.
She knows things get better.
She knows rivers clear and dry
Become a world
of rocks and green grass
and eventually brown grass.
But the immediacy of a heart allows for no such logic to rule and I am uncomfortable
watching her
because she is uncomfortable
and that is me.
