Grappling with Mixed Voices

I visited the caverns of my introspection and found them vacant. I've forgotten how to meander through myself. I used to do too much of that, I think. I used to be more smart than I was good.

I've gotten into the habit of counting things. Four people enter the middle elevator of our office building before the doors close. My phone flickers seventeen times before the battery dies. I've found twenty two bruises on my rude awakening, and realize that I'm one year away from my own ill fated imaginings.

I've become allergic to questions posed on humble kneebends. Solitude is better than repeating history.

I've been disassembling my life in hopes of perestroika. Maybe it's because my mother's house was Ikea and I was raised with an understanding of what it means to rebuild. Maybe it's because I remember my father's black leather couch, the kind that sticks to you in shorts, and know that furnishing with fixtures is overrated.

I'm living in Queens again. Did I mention that? I watch the bikers curve around the bend on Greenway south and trace the spot where seven people said "I love you". I wonder what it meant back then, and why it came so easily. Or why my skin grew colder when theirs glistened diamond. Why I said no...

Scores of children stand in rows and ask to be inspired. I'm teaching less than I've been learning.

Patience.

I want to be a year from now and confident.

I know that I'm a year from then, and proud.