Lack.

Where are you now, he says.  I stand on top of myself, I hear
myself answer.  I stand on myself like a hilltop and my life
is spread before me.  Does it surprise you, he asks.  I explain
that in our youth and for a long time after our youth we cannot
see our lives.  Because we are inside of that.  Because we can
see no shape to it, since we have nothing to compare it to.
We have not seen it grow and change because we are too close.
We don’t know the names of things that would bind them to us,
so we cannot feed on them.  One near the middle asks why not.
Because we don’t have the knack for eating what we are living.
Why is that? she asks.  Because we are too much in a hurry.

How do I find myself in these long stretches of glorydays and the nondescript hours?  I find myself lacking motion.  This thing within me is not so at peace and stirs chemicals and thoughts seeking some unbalanced equilibrium.  I am pulled forward by memory and drive and the momentum of almostfullyliving and yet, in wanting everything at once.

Irony.  I do not move.

I do not travel.  The desire to move is that which binds me in the house of infinite wait, and the gravity of gravity enters my consciousness.  I am held still by some numbness I cannot name.  I blame the medicine.  Easy.  Why can I still not shake this nothing?

Ordinarily I move.  I feel.  Lately I have felt so nearly numb that I cannot honestly remember the last time I felt strongly about something.  Anything.  Right now I want to cry, I cannot.  Strike something, break something.  I cannot.  I want to be held.  I won't.

                         And yet
                                                               here I sit

                                       in my chair

                                                 in this place that smells of ghosts.