losing the world

I sit on my little red seat and my eyes go whirr whirr and the people clap as they scurry on by up the little elevator and out into the big bright world and the subway moves between stations like a giant spaceship and the signs on the wall are talking in a language i try not to understand and the lights go bang bang and the man with the bag is looking down at his feet and everyone’s silent in their electronic hypnosis and i wonder if i have stepped into a dream and on and on we are carried on into the next encounter the next very important opportunity to find something of value to hold onto and i know i am a person in a body but to tell you the truth this still feels like a dream and i sense something closely resembling peace and while i am here i am somewhere else and i don’t mind that we all die and everything moves out of our hands which tremble in the face of what we cannot control and

i close my eyes and hear the sounds of the world gather down my spine and i smile because i am not at home here i am part of something else and it’s not quite liberation but it’s the next best thing this other world that never shuts me out and i fold myself into a belonging that cannot be broken by time and somehow losing just feels like opening another door and in this moment i am happy knowing there are things i want but i want this more.

~ Originally appeared in PRISM international 58.4, Summer 2020.