A Little Self Talk on a Snowy Evening
You are surely lost.
When is the last time
you knew the way home?
Was it back at that gas station
where you bought the chips
before you pulled out into the night?
Though even then the snow
was hurling its white fists into your lights.
But that was before your heart started
leaping like a startled deer into the
oncoming lane of your throat.
Oh darling, who are you kidding.
You were already lost even then.
Sure you could have pointed
to a dot on the map and said,
Exit 179, Here I am. But that
is just the game we play.
Something to satisfy our jumpy brains.
You have been lost since the day
you first could say your name,
the moment you knew yourself
as other, as separate, as something
that could be lost. Sometimes,
like now, when you think you
don’t know where you are,
see if you can lose a little more.
Your certainty. Your words. Your ideas.
Your shame. And maybe then,
off the map, out of hope, exposed
and unknowing, maybe that
is home.