Interludes

In darkness,

I questioned,

Existential, yes?

Yes. Quite.

In darkness,

I felt a naked other next to me,

And a difference like a vapor,

Short-lived between us.

We who are short-lived,

Roll and shout and quiet,

And loud and loud and LOUD,

Like vapors we tremble all the way up.

In darkness,

I wondered aloud,

To see if that would fill it,

You could talk like this for decades,

You could spend your entire life like this.

I wept, and I stayed, obligingly.

I visited wars and famines,

Prayers and harvests,

I played cowboys and indians in my head,

I played cops and robbers and used my fingers, 

Which I could not see, as guns. 

I had forgotten all about the other beside me,

The vapor a deceptive phenomenon indeed.

Indeed.

I fought pride, overcame it, and became prideful,

I wrote scores of books in my head, and imagined comfort,

But in darkness I could not sit down,

Letting go propelled me in the direction I wanted too far,

Until I was again straight,

So I abandoned comfort, intellect, safety in knowing,

And I wondered where the breaking point was.

Now try.

It bid me, or prodded me on,

Either way with strong hands I set out,

Until I could grasp what was not there,

And climb through illusions,

A mountain of transparent ideas,

I house of cards from a deck of jokers,

Near the top the vapor overcame my sight and mind,

But in my grasping, clawing I hit upon another,

Through the partition a reunion of sorts occurred,

And straining we reached the top,

And she turned to me, having just become she,

But I have always always always been me oh yes,

And she felt me and I felt her,

And she congratulated me, and told me that this,

At the height of all things is the greatest of tricks,

The final invention of mind,

The possibility of another amidst the darkness,

And the reaching beyond the boundaries of fingertips.

This is a right lie.

This is a good decision.

Rest in the home that you have envisioned, built, earned.

And I raised a hand in protest,

But could not see it,

So I began to speak,

But the past overwhelmed me.

And I looked up,

And beyond the darkness I saw....

~~~

The daughter of an ironworker,

Brown hair, about twenty two,

Was making shadow puppets on the wall,

Opposite the lamp behind us,

When I knew that I was alive.