I pour over stories

searching for the one

like mine, like mine

but

why, on earth, would I read

a story like mine?

Why would anyone write it?

Miserable at the start,

mediocre at the finish,

with small moments,

of glittering

magnificence.

Can I catch compassion

in paper?

Or would it run through,

run through the words,

out of your fingers,

destroying the machines

of creation.

Can I catch fear

in paper?

Or would those black letters

so closeset, so jarringly

chaotic,

so

so

so.

I couldn’t, you know.

Hard to write and harder still

to read

when you lurk in the liminal space

the limbo of becoming

a protrended leap not death defying

but death accepting.

Hard to remember a time before

we knew our echoes’

sound.