The Amniote

I invite you
to my loneliness
which is also yours:
ours, shared, decentralized,
distinct.

My friend, we are still amniotes
flailing in our fluid-filled sacs
spectres of solitude,
all we sense and all we seek
lie entirely within our olfactory envelopes.

We are, in a sense, complete.

I understand your joy,
that immense pleasure
when you reach out
and touch someone else
– for you have to believe there are others;

I understand that suffering,
that intense pain
when things are too beautiful
for their joy is in their transience:
our intransigent neurons
stubbornly normalize
that which is novel, refreshing,
reason-to-live endowing;

I know the smile you wear
when you purse your lips
and stare into sullen space
“It is what it is, a fact-of-life,"
as you call it, matter-of-factly.

What else can you do, but shrug
and grin and wince
and hope to forget?
What else can you do but sing
joyous songs plaintively,
and sad ones as anthems:
your sole response to all this learned helplessness –
Child, infant, foetus, amniote,
tugging at the umbilical, contemplating
its tensile strength.

When will you be done striking matches
to see dead and impossibly far away people,
When will you understand
When will you see
When will you be happy?