PRESENCE
Could Our Us still taste the same?
Half the time it looks, the same.
It looks identical.
:
You, tempting fate—leaping from buildings with only Providence and my worrying to catch and cradle you safely back down to earth.
That flavor stays with me.
That spice gets up in my nose, it makes me sneeze like fancy crushed black peppercorns falling atop special cream sauces, saved for only special occasions or a birthday!
Could it, Special?
Could Our Us still taste the same?
All the time, it feels the same.
Just as dangerous. As good.
Just as limitless as a new dimension,
like nothing is familiar and we’re in a womb,
like a dogfight in heaven;
Like Bravery’s proud aunt, she couldn’t help but hang all her nephews’ awards and accolades upon her fridge.
These are how I feel Our Us—
on my chest…in my guts…between ribs.
* * *
Our Us, on my mantle
:
A harvested, polished mineral is crystalized around a pewter figurine, it gives off such a sweet smell as it depreciates by the day. Still, the nutrient diamond holds its shine through the melting shell. There are rainbows. The spectrum, earth metal…a half-life palpably decreases—by definition, born dying, yet Our Us made of such thick living.
Couldn’t it overpower the taste of death?
Perhaps a marriage then—to see limit, a liberation?
With each recollection of a moment there is an uprooting, a distortion of the very precious spot in the brain, the ether place, the one we so desperately wish to hold onto. Yes, to remember robs the brain of its past, of its gains:
The more we try and taste Our Us, the further far it ventures lost!
I struggle not to rip my hair out and eat it, not to go into hibernation in search of some powerful regeneration of the mind, to crusade for my memories—I want to save all the parts of Our Us! Every rich original ingredient the then-ness of my memory attempts to rip away in order to make room for Other Usses, Other Anything!
…I will conceive and grow claws and teeth and spines, new bones to cover my thoughts. I will prepare them for natural battle against the misshaping veil of recall…
Ah! Reaching again over this line! Is this Our Us!? Do I just wish it were?
Our Us knew all the Faith…
Enough:
I am not awake, I cannot think of you,
I cannot think of you, you cannot slip away,
You cannot slip away, my dreams rebuild you,
So in every hour spent slumbering, leading up to my wake,
The only mattersome thing of Our Us,
To me,
Is the necessity it taste o’ today.
