To My Future
What have I withheld from you?
Nothing.
I have fed to you the men I might have kissed,
the jobs I might have held
and the countries I might have visited.
According to my palm, there were two men
I was meant to marry. According to my tea leaves,
I was meant to visit every continent.
I had a list of foods to eat before I died and foods never to eat,
not even if I was about to die,
and I have only not eaten.
I have not looked back.
Nonetheless, my mouth is bitter
with the taste of salt.
~*~
Riddle on Metamorphosis
To be human is to be like a cloud chalked into the sky
that some eraser could sweep off the blue board at any moment
To be immortal is to be solid as a pear in an old Dutch still life
that would choke you if you tried to swallow it, no matter how small your bite
But what does it mean to be a cloud shaped like that pear?
There are two kinds of sacredness often ascribed to a saint’s body,
either its lack of decay or its absence altogether from the grave
As you never see the skeleton, the cloud has no bones to rustle
but simply shifts: becoming a turtle or a tablet of bread, whose pieces fall
Not to feed but to instruct, naked and particular in shape as we must learn to be.
~*~