That’s the problem with reading: the words
process so intimately in the mind’s
panopticon that you think they’re yours.
And so, then, with anything you see:
you forget that you’re just the parchment
and not the poetry, just so many
chirps and burrs in the wind, not even words.
No one sees you. No one will ever see you
because they were never looking at you,
only something just past your shoulder,
one of those wounded moments when someone
waves and you offer a tentative hand
and a tender grin only to find them
greeting someone else just to your left.
Well, what did you expect? This is a world
of strangers, riding hidden forces
like tectonic plates. And you? Well, you’re
bobbing like a cork in that wide sea
and all you have is the words parading
across the alien proving ground
of your mind, the only thing that’s yours
because you didn’t read them, no one else
ever speaks them to you, no one else
ever will. They’re too busy hugging friends.
White Cat Grove 