What a Soul is Made of…

“Today I mourn the loss of a child,
one born three galaxies away.
I felt it crawl out of me and die,
mumbling something about
how topsy-turvy
my Lilliputian thoughts were getting…
How the world was a giant ball of despair.

Time agreed, and sat and cried with the child.
Slowly melting into one another, they left…
they left me — now I have neither innocence, nor years.

I sleep as I walk,
and daydream as I make polite conversation
about taxes and the weather, 
and the weather’s impact on the taxes…. yada, yada, yada.

There I stood in front of a set of funny mirrors,
like those in quaint joke-shops.
This wall of laughing mirrors
outside the office gym,
showed me a thing of wonder — -

a body dissected into 
long, delicate pieces…
all of them distorted in perfect measure,
all of them broken into things I did not wish to name.

I finally saw myself as I was — 
A soul hiding inside a bag of bones, made of
squiggles and brokenness…
My head was a balloon-ful of questions
and my arms were knitted socks,
my legs were Licorice wands.
I trotted off after a self-righteous snow-man,
trying to snatch the carrot off its nose. 
I like carrots, 
(and snowmen with eyes but no noses)
Carrots nourish the soul,
and the heart’s eyes.

But the mirrors ruined everything,
none of my ‘selfness’ is real…
It is just a person I lug around.
I’ve given it my name,
and I recognise it in photographs,
but it doesn’t sit well with my loopy soul.

I walked home from work,
shuffling my feet on the caricature of a midnight street,
of a city ready to fall into dreamless sleep… 
the sleep of adults.

The child yearns never to be born again
for this is not a city for souls it tells me, 
there are no homes here for light, and love, and child-heartedness— 
the little things a soul is made of.”