Familiar fingertips

Familiar fingertips

Lightly brushing

Soft lips barely touching

Conversation gushing

Endlessly

Red blood pumping

Loudly in my ears

Heart rate elevated, higher

Than it has a right to be

When you are near

Nothing really matters

Other than I know

You are with me

As much as I am here with you.

Sometimes I do believe

I would break bread with the Devil

To have you here with me

Until I remember I believe in him

Just about as much as he believes in me

And that is not at all.

It is of no comfort,

Nothing brings relief

Pain is part of the condition

I inherited when I discovered that I was human

It wasn’t always clear

Once I was an alien

An old turtle alone on a dead world

An archipelago

A flower without petals

Floating in the Sargasso sea

A bee with no sting

A less-than-sentient being

My purpose as indecipherable

As the pigeons or the trees

When I was younger nightmares were common

They are still, but now they have a purpose

Reminding me that I am alive

A presence in the world

For good or ill.

When I was a child they were more concerned

With isolating fear

Putting it in a box

Insulated against radical surgery

An echo of insecurity

Locked away in a safe place

As my inner self

My curious little soul

Tried to find its way

Into the world where it could be established

As an independent entity

In a world full of cyphers

I am still not sure if it succeeded

(Am I corporeal, are any of us?)

If only to act as a witness to the chaos

Upon which my consciousness depends

Whether I choose it to be or not.

Is discomfort the only proof of my humanity

The combination of internal and external

Voices

That always seem to be competing for my attention

I guess that is the narcissist in me

If I was fully integrated I would know

What to do with myself

Perhaps it is a universal

There is no reversal of fortunes

We are all stuck here

Waiting for the dust to clear

Before we can find our own way

To build a future for an existential self

At least that is what I tell myself

In the dead of night

When the shadows on the windows

Could be phantoms trying to steal my soul

Demons waiting to pull me down

The enemy at my gate

The devil in my detail

Instead of the sleepy sweep of a weeping willow tree

Blowing in the wind.