you like to ask questions, as do i, but i’ll come out and say it: there are not many great opportunities. instead, from my insides i wonder is it enough? — a pulsing from throat to stomach. for example, the rations i’ve assembled at a price-gouging grocery store on the walk to the subway from my piano lesson. the detailed accounting of my most banal, vain and weepy concerns in a large bound notebook. the patience i practice when rather than steering events towards my own gratifying or disappointing ends, i wait to see what you will do. i challenge myself to believe that this is what i was meant to learn from “everything”: a noble, in fact a staggering kind of openness in the face of what previously would have been a level of uncertainty that could induce in me, finally, perhaps, psychosis.
instead, when the panic comes, i do not close up, i do not lash out, i do nothing. i watch you not for signs and signals, but with interest. for example, right now: i’m looking at you so attentively, with a real warmth and generosity, an unnerving thing to most, and you remain mostly calm. occasionally i’ll catch a nervous moment, your eyes searching for a better place to look, your hand suddenly touching your face. i see you get lost and then coax yourself back. i don’t see you in relation to me, exactly. maybe this is noble. i see you, so far, as the parts you’ve shown me. you could be lying expertly and it wouldn’t matter, because i will wait for the truth. well, of course, this is the arrangement. though, i’ll be honest, i don’t know what the arrangement is. i haven’t asked.
i figure part of the great uncertainty is letting the right moment for clarity announce itself. but i’m a writer, so here’s what i imagine: i’m looking at you, and finally you make available to me a depth of acknowledgement. something in your eyes—i promise not a sign, but an indication—that says, “ok, ask me.” and then i request a detailed accounting of your most banal, vain and weepy concerns, and, because i am not stoic, which parts of me are in them. a pause. and then you ask, “which parts would you like?”
it’s simple, and at this point i would have already ended the poem but let’s first say that what i’ve imagined is possible, but it is probably not what will happen, and what probably will happen, i have not asked myself, preferring instead the truth.