musée

a friend hands you a novel,
feels you slipping between her fingers, tries to stuff them with pages instead.
months later you think you confess feeling there’s nothing
to latch onto. she hums into the sweeping familiar;
that feeling of balancing on the fulcrum of stagnation,
having to watch the tension in your own lifeline slacken.

you part ways, coast between your coasts
and when the waves soak your socks,
realize the ocean is as much a blockade as it is an expanse.
set sail, it mocks. you’ve run out of road after all.

you return home, pluck around. no lead singles emerge.
it’s all b-sides, filler, weeks later you can’t make out your own notes –
was it over/through, or overthrew?

even sacred rituals are suddenly colored by the unanswerable –
on your daily listen, a debate – ‘does bracing worsen injury?’
studies claim ‘debunked’ but there’s an edge in the voices of those EMTs.
relaxed muscles bend to chaos;
to harden against the unstoppable could only cause more pain, right?

you think,
this is why they peered with curiosity into the Jonestown dixie cups.
this is what sent Columbus into the pitch black with kerosene lamps and sails made of linen.
this is what happens when the only breaks in thinking about what you cannot live without
are filled with weighing what you may be able to live with.


so you try.
to relax. to remember those lyrics. to chart that course.
you assemble a swath of available new years,
set your polaroid camera on display,
a decorated comrade in enforcing that some shit takes time to develop.
you think of your younger self: how many identical fears you still share,
how starry eyed and slackjawed they look.
at you.

you finish your friend’s novel
mostly out of stubbornness, but still. it feels good.
enough that the next time you pass the store down the street
you wander in,
philosophy, poetry; man’s search for meaning tied in an alphabetical bow.
between them, you pass Shakespeare. the shopkeeper has taped cardstock to the shelf,
a handwritten fact for passersby to enjoy:

“generally speaking
the more complex the plot
the more likely the play is to be categorized as a comedy.”