I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!
-William Carlos Williams
Since I no longer remember
***
being created, I eventually decide
I must always have
been here already—a shambles
and alone
and content as such
to be: less
than I might be, more than
I was—and I suppose it's high time
to make for myself a nest
of this useless
old beggar's hat.
I try my best to sit back
and pine
at my new writing desk
over some perfect-
ly inscrutable
personal experience—
but almost immediately, I begin
to feel
stirring within me
the faintest thump, a pang
of something wider,
a feeling buried deeper
than hunger;
the redoubtable
little kick of new life—not mine,
the whispered beginning
of a brand new line,
a strangely
consonant pain: the desires
and strife—of all of my
neighbors.
