The first time I prayed I was somewhere else
my roots have always been far away so finding my body was
expensive
though, when I was little, prayer came easy.
It’s just what we would do together, I could look at the
floor,
look at all the different feet and feel certain I wasn’t alone
I used to have true clarity of thought, maybe because I
believed everyone was basically the same
We got convinced that being together is even harder than being alone,
so
we make up stories about how connected we are, fashion Others from our minds
and scrub them into our eyes like soap until we can’t see our own feet on the ground.
We run out of ourselves,
Then we run out of Others.
We get bored.
So, eyes still stinging,
we fly somewhere remote looking
for more souls,
for the kind of strangers we won't see again
we touch their faces, get in their
personal space like children putting their hands on the tv screen.
think - maybe if I
get close enough I’ll remember what it felt like to touch a person
Trying to reinvent futuristic feet instead of scrubbing the
blood off the ones we already had.
instead of wading into the sediment left from years spent
scrubbing each other out
We’re busy and important.
On weekends we pinch ourselves to make sure someone’s still there,
counting seconds between
distractions,
waiting for hands to land on us
