mmmmdcclxxvi

Absence vs. Death

Not having a job, I cannot
accept this challenge, I say
aloud to a social media post.

Who is the audience?  Me,
or those who disappear from
me, or those with whom I once

felt close who have since left

the living, died, passed on?
Who’s gone?  I know that I am. 

Who is here?  I know that I am.

Listening to the news as I type,
becoming further alienated....

But I’d rather be elated, happy
optimist that I am, right?  I re
peat something I frustratingly

fingered into my tiny pocket-

sized internet a few hours 

earlier when I was walking

Market Street in search of a
few beverages.  I was thirsty,
but was I alone?  Were these

creatures littered upon the 

sidewalk like me?  I was, 

in fact, communicating.  To

someone.  Who was some

where.  Something came 

back to me which seemed

a response to what I had

almost haphazardly sent 

off. These untethered

thoughts cannot integrate.
I’ve experienced disappear
ance.  I’ve been disappeared.

I’ve had people, if people we

are (names are also given to

ghosts) permanently remove 

themselves from my presence.
And I am reminded too often
that those who have vanished

show up elsewhere, presenting

themselves in ways that I can

see, or mostly believe I see,

can point to this purported 

proof that they are probably

somewhere.  If I look hard

again it seems that memory

and logic, if these can be 

trusted, provide hints that

the life of those permanently

gone from me are loved, that

they have joy and community.

And that all of this transpires

parallel to whatever might be

happening here.  Where I am.

With me.  Oh, it could all be
an act.  Witchcraft.  Or it could 

be that nothing exists, not even

me; not depression nor anxiety,

no grief or memory or love or

loss, this absence or dearth I

sense on the outside, relative

to what might have been, and

one that hollows out the inside, 

that burrows into the soul, 

removing its substance. 

Imagine that, the digging 

out from the inside.  Of a soul. 

What’s material?  What’s ethereal? 

Everything?  But what am I telling 

you, if anything is being told? 

Someone, who is here no more

but once probably existed, said it 

much better.  But before she, no
longer of this world (yet her words
very solidly, materially; and like the

cable I’ve connected to the device
upon which I type, are filled with
electricity, which is something like

life, perhaps—and a force that also
might remove it—should there be
movement, forces, actual words

with which to contend)—before I
give you what I am trying to say,
because I cannot say anything

with clarity, I’ll say what I can say,
like Come at me!  With all that you
have!  So that I am compelled to

resist.  And in that resistance, to 

feel.  And with such feeling and 

resistance I could come toward 

the notion that I am here, and 

even, perhaps, glimpse that I’m 

not alone.  Can you do that for me?

                    Absence is harder to accept than death.
                                                                    —Etel Adnan