Poem: Disappearing

I found a familiar yet new solace (and it found me)
hard to confront,
hard to embrace,
harder yet to dispel.
So I fell into fearful patterns;
snatched up by a gust
and carried by a current too strong to counter.

For this, or for that,
I saw myself left there, fading
into a distance. The Hard Story
told me I was too deep
with soft anticipation
and that the best remained
another distance in another direction.

And so, I tell a tale of concern
finding academic meaning in every word,
but dream an adventure told to me
a thousand times
in hopeful similes and wistful smiles.

And so, I found as I dripped here and there,
a respite (which found me too, of course)
in a dark corner lit only by a single melted candle light
with smooth conversation flickering its flame
and feeling for the air:
A lady two tables away teaches her son to count
and the barman asks if I’m OK.

And I am, I tell him,
“I’m very OK.”
I’ve disappeared for an hour or two
just me, demolishing and constructing,
waiting for a resolution.

Breaks in my concentration
enhance my focus,
distraction forces relief up from my hand to my wrist and arm
and across my chest
before rapidly coursing veins and arteries.
With a blind sigh, I fell into layer after layer of myself.

Blushing at everything and smiling at nothing,
delighted I’m no nearer
or clearer on my path to solution or response,
where an answer might form only to be drowned out,
my voice disappearing in here
alongside me, unknown and acceptable.

I raise my glass chin to the window
steam or frost coats it
obscuring shapes that should be people
as drops that should be rain
make no familiar patter on the glass,
before they disappear with me,
and I’m gone.