I am an iteration on a theme.
I look at the back of my head
when I look back six months,
six years, and maybe I feel
my eyes on the back of
my head now.
It's less
Who am I? and
more When am I?
(Are we all like this, unrecognizable
to ourselves in the main?)
My reality now is vastly different
than my reality six months ago,
six years ago.
My reality on a Saturday afternoon
is different than my reality
on a Monday morning.
My reality in the company of my
family, nestled in my home,
sheltered from the
elements,
from
the unknown
quantities of strangers,
is different than my reality at
work, driven second by second
by the toothy whip of time and
the judgement of the over-
seer's eyes, my interior
self perpetually
alert
for the
unpredictable
reactions of foreigners,
my mental hands shifting
here and there to buoy my mood
and restrict my words, my head
bowed to reflect my obedience.
I am an iteration on a theme.
Themes of homelessness,
loneliness, sadness, misery.
Which iteration outside of the
mayfly selves who exist for
only a few moments or
hours have been un-
burdened
by
the
weight of them?
Not me, surely.
Not she of six months ago,
trapped in her mind in a
windowless refrigerator
for eight hours a day.
Not she of six years ago,
freefalling in the
electrified
terror
of
living
alone for
the first time,
for the first time
relying entirely and
solely on herself, breaking
down over and over again
on the hardwood floor
of that dull empty
room in between
working two jobs
and learning
how
to
speak and
not knowing (in hindsight
as I look at the back of her head)
just how breathtakingly naive
she was, how profoundly
vulnerable, a prey
animal who
slipped
through
the
cracks
of the sprung
trap and narrowly
avoided annihilation.
Or maybe she was annihilated.
And now she's me.
I've been iterations who held on
too tightly, like the one whose
last act was to step onto
a plane (she died before
she disembarked),
or even my last
Sunday evening
self who clutched
her head between her
hands and balked at knowing
that when the lights go out
so does she.
It's a mercy really, mortality.
What's one more death after a
hundred thousand?
That final self won't have to wake
up and wonder who she is, what
trials and humiliations she'll
have to endure just to end
up in the same position
all over again, another
day, another point of
bifurcation, another
interior mutation
that can't be
predicted,
directed,
negated,
or
controlled
in any way, a
spiritual crap shoot
for a spiritual being trapped
in a spiritually dead reality.
That is, until her, until the last,
and for that I envy her even
if she doesn't exist... yet.
For her no more anticipation of suffering.
No more enduring what can barely
be endured.
With any luck she'll have (maybe)
one memory of having been lost
in bliss even if it was as
another self, another
iteration,
one
that existed
for only a brief bright
moment, a bloom of spirit,
a reunion with the divine before
sinking back into oblivion and
darkness.
Even I have a few of those,
faded as they are in the
imagination of who
I am now.
Half a day spent under the spell
of my drawing tablet. Singing
a silly song to my cat as
I cooked dinner. A
conversation
with
my husband
that was half laughter
and half dark banter over
the ridiculous darkness of
the world, about sleepwalkers
and the things that destroy
the soul.
Remembering isn't living.
I'm here now, at work.
I dress the way they want
me to dress. I speak the way
they want me to speak. I labor
the way they want me to labor.
I am their little daemon.
I can only hope I'll be someone
else this afternoon, barefoot
on the cheap rug in our
borrowed home,
listening
to
my husband's
beloved voice, reaching
out to pet a cat, an iteration
who absently slips into an eternal
moment unbound from earthly
shackles, who can forget for
the length of a breath
the weight of bills,
the aging body,
the scores of poverty,
the uncertainty of the future
and just... exist.
I am an iteration on a theme.
Themes of dislocation,
solitude, madness,
and loss.
I am a puzzle piece without a puzzle,
a question without an answer,
an anomalous soul, a traveler
on a journey to no
destination
at all.
July 2, 2026
