subtext

I walked through a different door;

and then, in epiphany, I sensed

I was lost. The patterns I moved

within were lifted, and I knew

nothing as familiar as a home.

As in those moments when tense

in a dream, you become aware

you are in a dream, and relax

back into sleep’s narrative,

I relaxed into the idea of being

lost in my life.  Except I was

someone else, and I knew I was

someone else, with a remnant

of me, redundant and superfluous;

but not enough to cohere

into a whole able to control

what was said and heard.

So, I stood still, one step inside,

beside myself, who was not myself,

another aspect of a waning moon.

Desperately, I gathered the traces:

the moonlight flickering the snow

clinging to the forest floor,

bits of conversation along with

the meaning I longed to give it;

all to patch together a pretense

of a memory never quite there.