My fingers have been
tapping insistently
for ten years, maybe.
I’m alert, noticing
they’ve stopped.
The wooden table
surface is sunken.
It’s chipped and hollowed.
Little shavings in piles.
Have I always been here?
This new silence is the answer.
I see sunlight and sweat
on the backs of my hands.
My claws are blunt.
My anxiety is spent.
I thought I’d been
walking around doing
things and enjoying things,
but that was just a film I saw.
Several films I guess.
I was the protagonist.
It wasn’t real.
Now, I think, this might be?
I search the silence.
Possibly singing somewhere
far away but I’m going to stand
and scout high and low for it.
I don’t know these words.
I’ll learn them.
I’ll try really hard to get up
and learn them.
Want to say my name out loud.
Don’t know it.
Forgot or never knew?
It’s time to check out
or check out something.
The day is young
and so am I, more or less,
despite the years, enthralled
by tapping on wood
to the tunes of
rendered lives.
It’s all subjective
like her beauty
but she knows
what I think.
