The Boat In the Mirror

 At some point one just looks in the mirror

And gives in

Accepts the detachment from the shell

The way having been at war with having to be an I

With having to have a body

Whatever it appears to others, to self, it is an irrelevant heap

Probably better even the woman I married thought I was not

Particularly attractive or handsome

So few parties to contradict that notion

Digest the reality that the whole game was shenanigans

The ruse of gene reproduction, of companionship

Probably easier to try not to try, not to want, than the alternative

If the universal current seems to be in contraflow, go

Better sailing in retrograde

Than to exhaust precious energy in hope or faith or wishing

That there was an island out in this ocean; there is no island

Better understand the lack of birds

Any rare sightings are just lost soon to realize there is only emptiness here

The pursuit of an empty boat

To take the thoughts, the assumptions, the musts and bail the contents

Into the water, into the air

Until the illusion of the something becomes the reality of the nothing as the everything

In the absence there is substance

In this place it may begin to feel like hunger or thirst or suffocation

But eventually with enough focus in the now

Those will go too

Oblivion, luscious oblivion in the gut, the flittering lungs, the plucked eyes

Nothing to sense in the acceptance of the everything

Maybe that is what I am supposed to do,

because I may not be meant for that other kind of love