Writing . Special Collections . Preservation
at night i find the way back to myself ;
it can be through a series of things. taking a walk through the rhinebeck woods when i was twenty and gone;
riding the subway through brooklyn years later listening to the same songs i fell asleep
sitting up.
then time would continue to pass by unannounced so different yet akin
to an unprovoked message at 3 am—
you die a little each time. have you noticed?
how the room becomes silent now when you enter his thoughts.
the past has not been evoked from your flash ; and there you die a thousand times from these new unthoughts.
your substantiality suffers with each tick of the clock from his unaffection and you fear the worst.
it is half past noon
in his eyes and
all you see are the
flowers of future ambitions. he says progress like
it’s a bad thing but
progress is all he talks about.
you suddenly see tears
in his eyes from this
but it’s an emotion unprovoked by your presence—
it is just the
presence of time and trees and their growth all around that leave their scar upon him.
he has grown more compassionate you realize but it
has nothing to do from you.
it is hard to accept
all of this in the moment, just as it is difficult
to adjust the perspective of past moments.
you were not then ready to ascribe to those moments which should have dictated your decisions today.
now you regret it all.
you are never the same person twice in an instant and so constantly you think of alternative
parallel universes where actions and words are not absolute paths to present ; where your felt mistakes are not made.
it is here, in your mind, that you are not tainted. you begin to believe an old lover’s theory that too much life skews
a person’s character.
alone at night
laying awake
in my bed
i attempt to retrace these thoughts,
and the path landed on from turning it over and aside ;
hearing nothing around me now i make the way
back to myself.