damakaia

i don’t believe i deserve anything good. still, it arrives — soft, almost apologetic. unannounced. and in those brief moments when the world stills — when the noise recedes — i feel it. not joy. not exactly. something quieter. light passing through leaves. water drawing lines across the roof. the sound of your voice, not near, but present. my father’s eyes. my mother’s voice in mine. a body that forgets, briefly, its own heaviness. my hands tremble. yours don’t. yours make them still. i look in the mirror. i do not know the person there. i think i’ve seen god, but not in the places we’re told to look. he lives in the overlooked — the small hills, the dirty windows, the accidental silence. i’ve met him there, asked my own demon for forgiveness. good things come. i do not think they are meant for me. i know this isn’t much of a poem. it could be rewritten. restructured. made into something better, more disciplined, more sure of itself. but then it wouldn’t be mine. and this —...

i’m sitting here at my laptop, and it occurs to me that i know an extraordinary amount about people i do not truly know. i know about their children, their schools, their husbands, their losses. i know their favorite colors, their grocery store preferences, the time they cheated, the time they were cheated on. i know what kind of dog they want when they move out of the apartment they can’t afford. i know the names of their parents. they know nothing about me. and perhaps that is a failing on my part. but i never asked. i never prompted. they tell me these things because the silence makes them nervous. people fill silence the way they fill shopping carts: compulsively, with items they didn’t mean to pick up. i become the receptacle. it’s easy. i nod. i don’t interrupt. i should consider the priesthood. still, there’s comfort in being unknown. really, there is. when no one’s looking at you, you’re free to wear the wrong shoes. you can disappear into the room, not because you aren’t there...