day TWENTY THREE

Singing in the Shower

Sometimes I recognize that you will forget me,
that we will forget all of this, and that all of this
will forget us, that we ever inhabited this space.

But these days, I find that when I’m not thinking
about the present or the past, I’m often thinking,
“Don’t think that—just please don’t think that.”

I slice open my middle finger while chopping up
vegetables for dinner. Maybe it was an accident.
Maybe I wanted some outward display of what’s
inside me. Maybe it’s a little “fuck you” to myself.

It just feels like I’ve been so damn malleable lately.

I call up my mother to let her know I’m not “dead
on the side of the road,” as she seems to like to say.
She tries to comfort me by saying she thinks we’ve
avoided something worse, something like a civil war.
She means well, but it’s not much of a comfort to me.

But I think about D.H. Lawrence, how he said that we
have “to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
I put on John Coltrane records until I’ve run through
all my John Coltrane records, then start back at the top.
And that seems to do some damage. It seems to tame

the beast a little. I think I’m good to step outside and
confront the world. I’m getting ready and I’m singing.

                            --Scott Silsbe