One Way

I've been writing all this
for years, but not living it.
I've not been living enough,

to say
with words
what I observe
with feeling
as I live it.

The work (!) is not "to write"
or "to do"
but to live,
to be.

To be alive is your work,
though death has been waiting
in the corner since the nursery.

I could be a breadmaker.
That is not who I am.
I could do it as a tile setter.
This is who I am.

This here unknowable life.
Can't with mind, free of that.
Yes, shell-less,
intellelectual-less,
flaw-less in this.

Free to be selfish, callous,
and still be

all those things
I was not allowed to be,
different every moment,
and still...

Looking still like me
at 12 or 43,
and everyone else,
seperate parts
of a whole,
the blurry edges,
the world, the way,
a watercolor.

Their souls, my soul,
one soul fractured
into tiny little shards,
sparkling through
our little bodies.

We are putting back together
this great crystal,
which came shattered in its box,
piece by piece,
heart by heart.
Picking and choosing,
but aware.