Split Atoms

Before I leave this earth, I have one thing to say,

Why me.

Before I leave this room, I have one thing to add,

Why not.

Before I make this appointment, I have one thing to mention,

Why bother.

Before I go on another journey, I have one item to communicate,

Why travel.

For it is not me that is going, not me that has lived, not me

that has bothered to make others's laugh or cry,

It is someone else who has done so, another voice, another face,

another emotion foreign to my face,

A bacchanalia held in another parlor, while I sit idly and hear the

shouts and the delirium and the artisanal grandness.

For I am not me and do not plan to be me anytime soon,

I'd rather be someone at one of these parties, who is only here

for the celebration and the community.

But I have no propensity for this, no skill set to guide me, no means

to be part of this. I can sit and watch others share and tie knots,

it is dual me, an other me that is not really me, a false front hiding

a trove of tunelessness and terror that others may not want

to uncover.

What if I can somehow thread the strand that ties me to my other,

what if I can no longer game play and offer a mask of glee

with a poker face underneath, a particular brand of articulateness

and babble, of relatability and irrelevance.

I want to know you, to see you, to get inside the skin of you

with you responding in kind and burrowing into my molecular self,

for it is in the details that we dance around, the vulnerability that we never view,

the essence that we escape, the curtain that is never raised except in private

spaces of a darkened room where no one else can see.

But you might be the one who can penetrate that permutation that is me,

the split atoms of my being and find the passion and the spirit that

wants to spiral out like that a pinwheel on a windy day but is instead

idle in an airless cranny.

It is you, maybe, or someone else unlike you that will know me for once,

takes me off the rink, removes the skates, unsharpens the blades

and lets me walk peaceably with you.