adhesive

Confidence is not 
helping me.

My approach, 
cautious,
is pretty much one big
wait and see.

Navigating 
this ritual
with a vocabulary so 
small and feeble 
compared to 
it's vastness

seems

unreasonable.

To get past this,
I will offer-

Take cares.
I will see you next times.
Good byes. 
Gimme a shouts.
I'm outs.

None of that 
though, 
really 
lets a person in.

it
just lets me
off. 

It's all spin.

And this persistent practicum- 
a new job, 
the end of a party, 
death, 
a first breath,
some change in identity, 

can create loose words 
that fail 
to forge purpose,
on purpose.

Unstoppable.
Unflappable.
All laughable,
until

the doorway moment
suffocates
and keeps us 
from landing 
or departing,
only encouraging 
attachment in fractions
without fuss. 

I am alarmed 
realizing
how ill equipped I am
to answer-
How do we prepare to leave?
What was was too early?
What will be too late?
When we arrived, what did we need?

If life mimics 
an airport, 
a traveler between thresholds, 
is like stalling 
mid air

and even though
you are safe 
inside a plane,
neither landing
nor leaving
is possible. 

It ain’t flying.
It ain’t falling.
It’s scary.

And if this
moment
will be defined
by context,
I want to
stay airborne
until I 
arrive.

ocean

we are not good at goodbyes.
perhaps it's because we believe
that nobody can disappear anymore.
with fewer full-stop moments
motion begets mindset belies connection.
like when we force
our parting words
around each other,
each needing to be the last one heard
and first one turning away,
we then pass out of doors
and through space
without much witness.
we used to do better.
our words could enarmour souls,
illuminate minds,
and buttress courage with hope.
we knew
without being told
that a short voyage away from us
could mean forever
or never coming back.
so we offered ‘god be with you’
or we’d say ‘go with god’
or even ‘with god’
but now
we nod
just above gracelessness,
if we even offer a goodbye.
we used to charge god
with protector and co traveller
as defense against the world's imagination.
but our minds,
like the world,
became filled with concrete things
and it felt strange and oddly mystical
to need blessings
against the unknown of everything,
anymore.
our curated knowledge,
piled up in silo'd spaces,
shielded us from a seismic shift -
no one falls off the edge of
the earth these days
because the rounding horizon always
seems to lead them back to you.
and we rely on that.
everytime we say 'see ya',
we do, ambling off over around
the bend and back into our lives.
a binary star of understated
black matter implodes
around the moment
and what makes us humane
becomes oversimplified,
commodified to the point that
relationships only can exist in plain view.
close a door light goes out.
open a door light goes on.
despite the truth
that the light we see
may have travelled
thousands of years to reach us.
that casual nod
without any ephemeral fog
of the hope
that should so deeply run through our networks,
creates a wide spread
fractured mess of relations.
some people we like,
others we quote,
a handful we actually
hold hands with.
and the trouble we face
is that when language
no longer has union with function,
and it becomes only fashionable
to wear relationships
like red carpet clothing,
and when we offer
vague bookends
to our comings and goings -
then what are we really offering each other?
can i offer a thought?
that this is one possible vanguard of
a world beginning to lose its meaning,
a world that cannot be lived in,
only through.